


A Nest of Vipers

by hioangeost



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crossdressing, F/M, M/M, Slow Burn, Time Travel Fix-It, Tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hioangeost/pseuds/hioangeost
Summary: Hermes Grangier: 16yo French wizard, Half-blood Son of a Muggle and a Witch, Refugee of the Global Wizarding War, Newly-Enrolled Student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.Also Hermes Grangier: 19yo English witch Hermione Granger, Muggleborn Daughter of Two Dentists, Recently Arrived in 1943 via Illegal Time Travel.Armed with her research, her intelligence, some unusual underwear, a haircut, and her knowledge of the future, Hermione has stepped back half a century to change the course of the Second Wizarding War. Rubbing shoulders with Tom Riddle and his band of sycophants, she must fight her way to a position of power and privilege whilst undermining the foundations of Voldemort's lifelong campaign.Tropey Tomione Time-Travel Fix-It with a bit of a twist.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle
Comments: 216
Kudos: 346





	1. I. Welcome to the Jungle

**Author's Note:**

> All recognisable content is, of course, the property of JK Rowling.
> 
> My first ever post and first ever fic, inspired and informed by the huge collection of fics comprising the current world of Tomione. Canon-compliant until it isn't. I have another few chapters written, but no fixed update schedule yet, as I'm reluctant to set a pace I can't maintain. Hope you enjoy.

_“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”_ – Andy Warhol

“In quite the unique circumstances,” Headmaster Dippet smiled at the student body, “we have one final sorting to take place this year. Due to the unfortunate situation posed by the Global Wizarding War, we are pleased to welcome Mister Hermes Grangier, recently arrived from France. Mister Grangier will be commencing his sixth year, and I trust that you will all, regardless of your house affiliations, make him very welcome. Mister Grangier?” Dippet indicated Professor Dumbledore, who was standing beside the sorting stool, a smile on his face and the Sorting Hat dangling from his hand. Despite the fraudulent circumstances of her being there in the first place, and the much more pressing things at stake, Hermione couldn’t help but blush as the eyes of the entire school fell upon her. She rushed to the stool, grateful that the Hat’s brim did an adequate job of concealing her face.

 _‘Mister’_ _Grangier, is it?_ The Hat’s voice in her ear was wryly amused, but also a trifle suspicious.

 _Please, please, please,_ thought Hermione, _this is necessary._

 _Such courage_ , the hat observed, sounding surprised, _and such brilliance! Even so, there’s also loyalty, and more than a little ambition. A Gryffindor, I see._

_Yes, though you seriously considered Ravenclaw._

_And you would do well in either, I think_ , _but times change, don’t they, Miss Granger? You’re not the girl you once were_ , it chuckled at the double entendre, _or ‘will be’, I suppose. Your idealism has been sorely shaken, and you’ve learned to look beyond your books. You’ve lost everything, Miss Granger, more than some could stand, and yet you’re here with a purpose._

_I am. Slytherin, please, Slytherin._

_Is that really what you want?_

_No, and yes. It will be hard, I know, and dangerous, but it gives me the best chance._

_If you’re looking to mend the world-that-isn’t-yet, be warned that it will be even more difficult than you fear. Time is volatile, and people are more unpredictable still._

_If it means success, then there is nothing I won’t do._

_Spoken like a true Slytherin, Miss Granger. There is ruthlessness and determination in you, which you will need, loyalty to your friends and your purpose, and a fierce intelligence that I have only rarely seen. Your path is a challenging one, and hazardous: I hope that the courage of your Gryffindor heart will sustain you._

_It could only be me. There was…will be?...nobody else left._

_In that case, Miss Granger, I suppose I ought to give you the best possible opportunity, even if it is accompanied by the greatest possible danger._

_Thank you, thank you!_

“SLYTHERIN!” There was polite applause from all four tables as Hermione gratefully removed the Hat, passed it to a slightly disappointed-looking Professor Dumbledore, and made her way to the Slytherin table. It took a conscious effort to stop her feet from following the familiar path to Gryffindor, and she couldn’t quite refrain from the briefest, longing look at the scarlet and gold hangings. Having written her off as a snake, the lions, eagles, and badgers were gradually turning back to their fellows, though she was still followed by any number of intensely curious glances— hardly surprising, given her new backstory. Only her new housemates kept their collective eyes on her, though their attention was understated and aloof, as befit their reputation. She moved past the spaces where most of the first years were sitting (they really did seem ludicrously small) and took the first available space between two students who looked close to herself in age.

As she took her seat, Hermione wondered whether she could have made herself any more conspicuous. Already alarmingly short and skinny for a ‘sixteen-year-old boy,’ her diminutive size was only exaggerated by the size of the hulking boy on her left hand side. Even sitting down, he towered over her, and standing, she imagined he would be over six foot. He was broad and muscular, with straw-coloured hair and matching stubble, and his pale blue eyes reminded her of Ron, a thought which made her heart twinge painfully. While his expression wasn’t precisely dim, it lacked the penetrating scrutiny that she could already discern on most of the other faces around her, and she found herself gravitating towards him because of it.

To her right sat another boy, this one much slighter of build—still taller than her, naturally, but slim and handsome. His features were aristocratic in that slightly inbred fashion she always associated with the Blacks and Malfoys, and he was looking at her down his rather long, delicate nose in a way that wasn’t _un_ friendly, but was still decidedly upper-class. She eyed his hair enviously; it was impeccably smooth, and a gorgeously dark shade of auburn which was striking against his fair skin and green eyes. In fact, all of the boys at the table were well-groomed, with scarcely a hair out of place. It was a far cry indeed from the Great Hall of the 1990s, especially that terrible period in fourth year when the boys had all favoured wearing their hair long. She started to raise a self-conscious hand to her own unruly curls—even more errant than usual, without the extra length to weigh them down—but managed to stop herself while the appendage was still concealed by the table. She was a Slytherin now, and most of the Slytherins she had known had always seemed unshakably confident. She tried to assure herself of her own superiority, and to summon up the feelings of entitlement and assurance that she imagined would accompany such a sense.

The shorter of the two boys was the first to greet her, extending an elegant hand that had quite clearly never seen a day’s hard work, and she took it immediately, not wanting to get on anyone’s wrong side. “Welcome to Slytherin house.” he drawled. “Grangier, was it?” His plummy tones, and the way he didn’t quite open his eyes fully, as if she were ever-so-slightly unworthy of his attention, screamed of a posh upbringing and a life of ease and advantage. She nodded. “Rainier Lestrange,” he informed her lazily, and she tensed momentarily, eyes widening for the briefest second as she looked at him again. This man, this _boy_ , must have been the father of Rodolphus and Rabastan. Now that she knew, she even fancied she could see a slight resemblance to the younger of the Lestrange brothers from her time, though they had been twisted and prematurely aged by Azkaban when she had encountered them. She managed not to wrench her hand from his, keeping the thin smile fixed on her face as he released her. Her fingers itched to reach for her wand. She could kill the smug little cretin at that very moment; he’d never expect it, and would be face-down in his potatoes before he realised what was happening. If Rainier died before having children, Rodolphus and Rabastan would cease to exist, and Bellatrix may never become closely involved with the Death Eaters. Neville’s parents wouldn’t be tortured into insanity, and her brave classmate would be raised by parents who recognised and loved him. Furthermore, with the advantage of surprise, she could undoubtedly take down a few others before she was apprehended. Dippet and Dumbledore would be on her within seconds, of course, but she could use a blasting charm or similar to impose maximum damage on everyone sitting in her immediate vicinity. There was little doubt that they were all Voldemort’s followers, or at the very least parents of Death Eaters. With a few seconds, and one or two well-chosen curses, she could cripple Tom Riddle’s band of reprobates, and possibly the man himself, depending on where he was sitting. Forcing her hand away from her pocket, she took a deep, steadying breath. She wasn’t here to murder strangers with impunity, no matter how tempting, and she would need to get a grip on herself, as she very much doubted Rainier Lestrange would be the only familiar face or name.

Seemingly not having noticed anything amiss, Lestrange was still talking. He gestured at the huge blond to Hermione’s left. “That monster is Caius Mulciber; he’s not as stupid as he looks, in case you were wondering, though that’s not saying an awful lot. We keep him around, though, because he’s terribly good with brute force—a beater for the house Quidditch team.” She nodded to Mulciber, who muttered an indistinct greeting in response. “Opposite us,” he indicated a black-haired, grey-eyed boy who appeared several years their junior, “Orion Black, fourth year, and beside him is his betrothed, Walburga Black, seventh year.” Hermione permitted herself a lingering look at Sirius’ parents. The marauder she had known favoured his father, handsome and bright-eyed. Walburga, while not as foul as Hermione might have expected from her vulgar portrait, was striking rather than pretty, with aquiline features and lips that were pursed in mild disapproval. “Orion’s sister, Lucretia, is also a seventh year, but she’s in a Prefect meeting.” Lestrange advised.

“Hermes Grangier,” Hermione murmured, exchanging a polite inclination of heads with the couple.

“You’re French, Grangier?” Hermione nodded in response to Orion’s question; she had repeated the action so often since sitting down that she felt rather like one of those spring-necked dogs people perched on the dashboards of their cars. “You haven’t much of an accent.” the boy observed, forcing her to reluctantly offer some detail.

“My mother was English, and was around more than my father. I speak both fluently, but I’ve always sounded more English than French.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Walburga interjected, mouth still censoriously pinched, “but isn’t Grangier a muggle surname?”

“Yes, Miss Black.” Hermione replied briskly.

“You’re a half-blood, then?” The girl couldn’t quite conceal her displeasure at the revelation, and Hermione noted a flicker across Lestrange’s face too.

“Yes.” she replied simply. “Muggle father, witch mother.”

“You said your mother was English,” Walburga said, clearly eager to press the advantage while she perceived her victim to be on the back foot, “what was her maiden name?”

“Are you _all_ in the habit of interrogating your housemates about the circumstances of their birth and upbringing upon a first meeting?” Hermione responded coolly, raising her eyebrows and gazing at them with dispassionate haughtiness. “Perhaps you do things differently in England, but I would regard this as rather a personal conversation, given that we are strangers.” Walburga had the grace to flush ever so slightly.

“Pardon my forwardness, Mister Grangier. Blood and family are of paramount importance in Slytherin house, but I didn’t intend to cause any offense.”

“None taken, Miss Black,” Hermione said, pleased to have shifted the balance of power in their exchange, “and for the record, my mother’s maiden name was Smith.” She had researched and chosen the name well ahead of time—the Smiths were a large (but notoriously pureblooded) family, and the surname far too common to be easily traced. She would rely on the obscurity of her foreign muggle father, and the fact that no muggleborn had ever been sorted into Slytherin, to protect her from too much genealogical examination. She supposed, with wry amusement, that she had Tom Riddle to thank for the Slytherins’ current tolerance of half-bloods. They could hardly disparage her without offending him, and all evidence indicated that it was best not to provoke his temper, especially where his questionable background was concerned. All her information and research indicated that Riddle had murdered his father and grandparents sometime in the last thirty days: framing his deranged uncle for the triple homicide, snatching up the ring that was the Gaunt family heirloom, and severing a portion of his already-defaced soul to convert the piece of jewellery into his second horcrux—a busy holiday, by anyone’s measure. While Hermione wasn’t sure what or how much Riddle’s ‘Knights’ might know about their leader’s extracurricular activities, she was quite certain that they knew he wasn’t to be trifled with.

“—is on Orion’s right.” Lestrange was still talking, apparently oblivious to her inattention, and she missed the name of the brunette girl he was indicating. “Next to her is Alphard Black, Walburga’s brother, another fourth year. On Walburga’s left, Prunella Parkinson, who’s in our year level. Her younger brother Prentiss was sorted just before you, he’s down there.” In both cases, Hermione noted, the Parkinson pug-nose was clearly evident. “Beside her is another from our year level, Lucilla, Mulciber’s sister.” Lucilla Mulciber was very much a smaller, prettier, female version of her brother, with the same docile expression and faded blue eyes. Hermione’s memory was exceptional, as was her capacity to absorb information quickly, but she found her head was almost spinning with the stream of new faces and names. The conflation of her existing memories with the new information was particularly disorienting, and she’d have to be doubly careful not to slip up.

“Do shut up, Lestrange.” another polished voice interjected, and Mulciber leaned back a little, revealing the neighbour who had previously been concealed by his massive torso. “Grangier,” a hand was extended, and Hermione shook it, “Tristan Nott.” Nott, like his presumed grandson Theodore, was a thin brunette. He had a pale, narrow face which, despite the sharpness of his features, was not unpleasant to look at. His dark eyes were keen and probing, and the quill callus on his middle finger well developed, suggesting a studious temperament, but there was still a trace of humour evident in his thin lips. Despite what he was, and what he would be, there was something about him that Hermione liked immediately. She had often seen Theodore in the library during her time at Hogwarts; he had been quiet, rarely as overtly rude or prejudiced as most of his housemates, and she had always wondered whether they might have been friends if they had both been sorted into the same house. “What Lestrange has failed to mention,” Nott added, “is that you’ll be sharing a dorm with him, myself, and Mulciber here. Dorms here are organised by year level, so there are a couple of others you should meet. The first is Alfred Avery.” he leaned back to reveal yet another boy, this one with wavy, honey-blond hair that was perfectly coiffed into a low pompadour. Though he was tending to lanky, Avery had a sporty look to him, and the warmth of his complexion indicated that he’d had plenty of sun over the holidays. She greeted him as well as she could, given that he was two seats down and out of hand-shaking range, and he grinned cheerfully in response. “And then…” Nott trailed off, glancing up and down the table until he apparently found the person he was searching for.

A quick gesture saw Lestrange lean out of the way, and Hermione found herself regarding an attractive, masculine face. Her entire body tensed, and she forced a smile as she met the boy’s bright blue eyes. His hair was very dark, only a shade shy of black, and was styled so flat and shiny that it looked like it had been waxed and polished. His fair skin was, she noted with petty satisfaction, afflicted by a mild case of adolescent acne. All told, while he was certainly good-looking, Tom Riddle wasn’t quite what she had been expecting. She had been unable to find many photos of him in his youth, save one or two small, grainy ones from Hogwarts yearbooks, which had revealed little except that he was fair-skinned and dark-haired. She had also seen him in Harry’s memories, of course, but memories were unreliable. A memory wasn’t a true and perfect copy of an event, but rather the remembrance of a particular individual, shaped by their perceptions and biases. It was their experience, after all, which was committed to a pensieve. Her ‘memories’ of Tom Riddle were derived from Harry’s, which had in turn been derived mostly from Dumbledore’s (as well as his second-year experience with the diary), and it was little surprise that they had strayed somewhat from objective fact. Riddle leaned around Lestrange with his hand outstretched in greeting, and she had to resist the temptation to spit at him. “Nice to meet you.” he said, and his voice wasn’t as certain and compelling as she had imagined it would be. “I’m Emmett Rosier.”

Hermione could have smacked her own forehead soundly against the edge of the table. Of _course_ this wasn’t Riddle! Hadn’t Lestrange already told her that there was a Prefect meeting happening? She knew perfectly well that Riddle was a Prefect, and that he would therefore be occupied elsewhere. Ten minutes in, and she was already making stupid mistakes and forgetting obvious details. She needed to pull herself together and bloody _think_.

“Rosier.” she shook the proffered hand. “Hermes Grangier.”

“Unfortunately we can’t yet introduce you to our brightest and best.” Nott informed her. “Tom Riddle is our sixth-year male Prefect, so he’s in a meeting, but you’ll see him in the common room if he doesn’t make it to dinner. He’ll be Head Boy next year, nothing surer. Top of the class, expected to achieve some of the highest NEWT scores in recent history, _and_ he got ten OWLs.” Hermione struggled to keep the smug expression off her face, knowing that she, a _mudblood_ , had earned as many OWLs as darling Tom Riddle.

“I’ll look forward to it.” she lied and, allowing Lestrange and Nott to carry on talking, turned her attention to her dinner.

***

While the welcome feast seemed interminable, Hermione eventually found herself guided to the dungeons by her new housemates. She knew, from Harry and Ron’s Polyjuice episode, which wall was the entrance to the Slytherin common room, but had never set foot there herself. Avery gave the password— _purus_ , how stupidly predictable—and they entered the space in a tide of happy bodies.

It was shadowy; a long, low-ceilinged room of smooth charcoal stone which could not have been more different from the round, warm, scarlet-furnished Gryffindor tower. The furniture was dark and elegant, somewhat Victorian in appearance, featuring an abundance of ebony timber, emerald velvet and deep green leather. Glowing green orbs, made of glass, but illuminated by magic, hung from the ceiling on chains. She was pleased to note that there was at least a fireplace, even if the mantel did feature an elaborate carving of a serpent with glinting cabochon eyes. Nearest the fire were two studded leather chaise lounges, a large leather wing-back, and a couple of smaller, bergère chairs with velvet padding. One of the lounges was, at that particular moment, occupied by Alphard Black and another boy. Hermione’s eyes widened at the sight of him: pale, refined features; silvery, white-blonde hair; and grey eyes. While this boy wasn’t quite as pointy as the Malfoy she had known, he was obviously a close relation—the resemblance to Lucius, and by extension Draco, was uncanny. It was enough to make Hermione wonder whether the Malfoys reproduced in the conventional fashion, or just replicated themselves through some sort of whole-body binary fission.

“Black, Malfoy, make yourselves scarce.” Lestrange said, with a dismissive flick of his hand. Malfoy glanced up at them, Draco’s familiar sneer evident on his features and a Prefect’s badge glittering on his robes.

“Piss off, Lestrange.” he replied, without much intonation. “You don’t own the place. Besides which, _I’m_ a prefect and _you’re_ not.”

“Going to dock house points, are you, precious?” Lestrange smirked, but glanced around the room before asking after Riddle.

“Slughorn caught him after the meeting for a private word.” Malfoy said, as his eyes fell on Hermione. “Who’s this?”

“Hermes Grangier.” Lestrange quickly responded, not giving her the chance to answer for herself. “New boy, sixth year. Grangier, this is Abraxas Malfoy.” Malfoy jerked his chin up in snobbish acknowledgement of her unworthy presence, and she muttered a greeting. _You’re going to die prematurely of dragonpox_ , she wanted to tell him, _but not until after you sire a line of conceited, albino bigots with even less backbone than they have melanin_. “Now scram,” Lestrange told Malfoy, “before Tom gets back.” While Malfoy rolled his eyes and made an exaggerated show of standing up and moving away, Hermione was interested to see that the mention of Riddle’s name was enough to force the blond’s compliance. With a nod to Lestrange, Alphard Black stood and followed, leaving the furniture vacant. Lestrange emitted a satisfied sigh and dropped onto the chaise, sprawling along the length of the couch and propping himself on one elbow as if waiting to be painted into an old master. Mulciber, Rosier and Nott took the bergères, the elegance of the chairs particularly amusing when juxtaposed against Mulciber’s enormous, slouching frame. Avery leaned his torso against the arm of the remaining chaise, extending his legs along it and folding his arms behind his head. The wingback was the only available space, and Hermione stepped closer to it, glancing around anxiously before perching tentatively on the edge of the seat. The others were already talking (about Quidditch, of all things—it turned out Avery was a chaser, as well as Mulciber’s being a beater) when Nott suddenly gave her a startled look.

“Better not sit there, Grangier.” he said quickly, and four other sets of eyes suddenly landed on her, leaving her squirming under their regard. She sprang upright, glancing down to see if there was some problem with the chair. “That’s Tom’s spot.” Nott said, and Hermione gave him a ‘so what’ look. “He should be along in a couple of minutes.” the boy offered by way of explanation, and she nodded her acceptance. Nott didn’t need to know that she understood the subtext— _best not let Riddle see you there, or you won’t like the consequences_ —perfectly. “Move your legs, Avery.” Lestrange instructed, and Avery did so with a bit of grumbling, dropping his feet to the plush rug beneath them and freeing one end of his chaise for her to sit on.

The minutes ticked by slowly, and Hermione spent them staring into the green flames, feeling the warmth against her skin and watching the eerie glow flicker and swoop across her hands. She occupied herself with the thought that it was almost a physical adoption of her new persona, a glowing green mantle for her time in the vipers’ nest. Hermione Granger, muggleborn Gryffindor witch, was dead, or at the very least in deep seclusion, whereas Hermes Grangier, halfblood Slytherin wizard, was just reaching his majority. She occasionally murmured a response to a question, but was largely silent, hoping her companions would assume that she was merely overwhelmed and a little timid, unsettled by her new environment. Eventually, Lestrange glanced downed at his manifestly expensive watch. “Well, it’s after eleven, and if there’s no sign of Tom, I’m for bed.” There was a general mutter of agreement from the group, and they all stood, straightening their clothes and stifling yawns. As they walked towards one of the two doors flanking the room, Nott indicated that she should follow. Moving through the heavy timber door, they found themselves in another greenish corridor, this one with four doors on the left and three on the right. Each door was blank save for a handle and an elaborately worked silver number, ranging from one to seven. Lestrange led them to the last door on the right, featuring an ornate silver six, and pushed it open, revealing the dormitory that Hermione would be sharing with her nemeses for the foreseeable future.

Relief was the first thing Hermione felt, as the dormitory was both brighter and warmer than the common room. Though the dark, green-and-silver theme remained, the thick rugs, bed curtains, and lavish wall hangings took much of the chill from the room. The green globes were mercifully absent, replaced by wall-mounted lanterns which glowed brightly in the usual pale golden hue. A lavish lamp stood on each nightstand and, though the shades were green, the light within was not. At the far end of the room was another door, ajar, which she could see led to a bathroom. Seven extravagant, four poster beds were arranged in the same fashion as the doors in the hallway, four on the left, three on the right. Lestrange had already rushed to the opposite end of the room and thrown himself upon the furthest bed (the fourth on the left), craning his head momentarily to check that it was indeed his trunk which was positioned at the foot.

“Lestrange always gets the bed closest to the bathroom.” Nott said, rolling his eyes. “It’s only sensible, given that he’s the one who spends the most time admiring his own reflection.” Avery and Rosier emitted quiet huffs of amusement.

“Bugger off, Nott.” Lestrange snapped. “It’s not my problem you’ve never yet found a girl who likes the look of you.”

“If you’re still engaging in such shameless self-promotion, then I take it your father hasn’t yet managed to pawn you off onto some well-bred floozy?” Nott inquired with false innocence. Lestrange lobbed a shoe at him, which fell several metres wide of the mark.

“You’d know if he had, you bloody tosser.”

“Would you two give it a rest?” Avery said, amusement outweighing the touch of frustration in his voice. “We’ve only been back a few hours, and you’ll scare the new boy.” he smirked, chuckling at her loud and obvious scoff.

“Yes, father.” Lestrange declared dramatically, flopping back against his pillows. The other boys moved to their beds, their easy familiarity suggesting that the order remained unchanged from year to year. Nott took the bed next to Lestrange, Mulciber the first on the right, Rosier the second, and Avery the third. Hermione swallowed reflexively as she realised that the only two remaining spaces were side by side, the first two on the left, and that she would inevitably end up with Riddle as a neighbour.

“Tom always takes the bed nearest the door.” Nott told her, as she dithered in the middle of the room. “It used to just be a matter of personal preference,” _yes_ , Hermione thought bitterly, _being able to come and go without being noticed, and being privy to everyone else’s comings and goings_ , “but being a prefect, he’s also the most likely to be summoned overnight.”

“Right.” she muttered, finding her own trunk neatly placed at the foot of the second bed. Opening it, she seized her pyjamas and the little black zip-up case that contained her toiletries before dashing into the bathroom, sliding the lock into place with more than a little relief.

 _Merlin’s bollocks_ , one of Ron’s favourite curses drifted across her mind, _what have I done?_ Taking a few deep breaths, she used the loo, washed her hands and face, and brushed her teeth thoroughly. She’d shower in the morning; she was used to living with teenaged boys, and had no doubt she’d be the first up. She eyed her standard-issue Hogwarts pyjamas with distaste—there would be no more sleeping in t-shirts and singlets with soft trousers. Starting out with a set of muggle foundation garments, like something an older aunt might wear, she had transfigured herself a special bodysuit as part of her disguise. It had a low scoop neck that would be well-concealed by her uniform, even with a shirt button open, and had been charmed to match her skin tone exactly. It flattened her small breasts, and squeezed her already-narrow hips tightly, but had a tiny bit of padding in the chest and waist to give her a slightly more masculine figure. She’d added two dark bobbles of fabric that, through a shirt, resembled nipples, and also a dark depression where her navel should have been. The top resembled a singlet, and it finished like shorts at the top of her thighs, looking like a particularly unappealing (and rather perverted) old-fashioned bathing suit. Upon any sort of inspection, it was easy to tell that it was a garment and not her actual body. However, it ought to stand up to a cursory glance if someone should catch a glimpse of it by accident, and there was far less risk associated with wearing it than with maintaining glamour charms or brewing and ingesting an unending stream of Polyjuice. Pulling on the pyjamas, she fastened the shirt to the top button, checking her reflection to ensure that everything was adequately covered. Satisfied that she had done her best, she re-entered the dorm. It was only as the door thudded closed behind her that she realised there was a new voice contributing to the conversation in the room.

The voice in question was low, smooth, pleasant, and precise. Not as drawling as Lestrange, not as rapid as Nott, with more gravitas than Avery, and a confidence and certainty that Rosier lacked. It seemed unfair to compare it to Mulciber, who appeared to communicate mostly in grunts and mutters. “First Slug Club meeting is the Friday of next week,” the voice was advising, “so ensure that you leave the evening free.” Fervent agreement fell eagerly from five mouths, and Hermione emerged from around Lestrange’s bed to take her first look at the boy who would become— _was_ becoming—Lord Voldemort. He was standing just inside the dormitory’s doorway, having been swarmed by his lackeys before he could move any further into the room. When he caught her movement from the corner of his eye, his dark gaze snapped to hers.

 _Fuck_ , Hermione thought, incapable of anything more interesting. Tom Riddle was just as devastating as her worst nightmares had led her to imagine.


	2. Seeing and Believing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all amazing! Thank you so much for the comments, kudos, and bookmarks - the response for the first chapter far 'exceeded (my) expectations'. Given the warm reception, I now feel that I need to sit down and make a much clearer and more detailed plan for how this story will progress. At this point, I am thinking of updating every 2-3 weeks, but this chapter is coming along sooner, as I wanted to (a) show my gratitude and (b) give you all a little more information about how I'll be moving forward. Hope you enjoy the chapter (and especially meeting Tom).

II. Seeing and Believing

_“Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”_ – William Shakespeare

It was a face that belonged to the silver screen, movie posters, priceless paintings, and marble sculptures. The features were beautifully proportioned and shaped, just strong enough to exude masculinity, but retaining an aristocratic refinement. He had a sharply-cut jaw, neat chin, and a fine, straight nose, all improbably symmetrical. His hair was coal-black and carefully groomed, swept back in a way that perfectly trod the boundary between casually tousled and meticulously styled. As Hermione approached (a little slowly and reluctantly), she noted that his lips were full and shapely, with an unusually well-defined philtrum accentuating the contour of his cupid’s bow.

Riddle’s brows were thick, black, and gracefully arched, the contrast startling against his pale and perfect skin. Abandonment issues or not, he ought to have been devoutly thankful to the muggle father who had gifted him that face. The thought of his father—whom he had undoubtedly murdered at some point in the last thirty days—almost made her flinch, and her eyes flickered impulsively to those of Tom Riddle Junior.

Meeting his regard was nothing short of terrifying. His eyes were dark and fathomless and, even though they were at that moment softened in the imitation of welcoming cordiality, devoid of feeling or warmth. Looking at them was nearly enough to make her shiver. She imagined it was the same feeling one would get from gazing into a black hole, if such a thing had been possible: a lightless void that threatened the end of the world.

She was silently horrified that she was meeting him when she was at such a disadvantage. She had rehearsed the moment a thousand times in her head, imagined encountering him on an equal footing, mentally and physically prepared, not tousled, pyjama-clad, and ready for bed. He was still dressed in his uniform, though he had put his robes aside. His white shirt was pristine, his green and silver tie straight and sitting properly, right under his collar. His Prefect badge, polished to a high shine and without a single fingerprint, glittered on the lapel of his immaculately-pressed blazer, and his shoes gleamed equally bright. The creases on his trousers were so sharp that she could have cut herself on them. It was no wonder the others looked to him to lead—she wasn’t even an actual boy, and she still felt cripplingly inadequate as she stood in front of him.

“Mister Grangier.” Riddle’s smile was utterly charming, and his teeth excellent. “Welcome to Slytherin. I’m sorry I couldn’t introduce myself at the feast, but I trust my friends have made you feel at home?” He stretched out a pale, elegant hand, and she managed to shake it without physically recoiling.

“They certainly have.” she said. “Your reputation precedes you, Mister Riddle.”

“Oh, dear.” he said, with a laugh that might have been disarming had she not known what he was. “Only the good, I hope?” _You wish_ , Hermione thought snidely, _you’re preceded by fifty years of reputation that you haven’t yet lived to cultivate, you snake._

“Naturally.” she forced out with a hollow chuckle.

“If there’s anything I can do to help you settle in, you need only say the word. As your prefect, and especially as your dorm-mate, it’s my duty to ensure that you’re comfortable and happy here, despite the unfortunate circumstances dictating your arrival. It can’t have been easy living in Grindelwald’s warzone, but you’re safe now.” His teeth flashed as he gave her a reassuring smile, and the irony almost made her laugh. _Grindelwald be damned, Riddle. I’ve lived in_ your _warzone_.

“Thank you, Mister Riddle.” she hoped her smile didn’t look as much like bared teeth as it felt. “You’re very kind.”

“Please,” he rested a bracing hand on her shoulder, his manner sickeningly consoling, “call me Tom.”

“As you wish, Tom.” she said, struggling not to choke on the word. There was a glimmer of expectation in his eyes, as he no doubt waited for her to return the invitation to use her first name. Trifling and stupid though it was, she delighted in her capacity to deny him that tiny privilege, giving him one last smile as she turned to her new bed.

***

Hermione slept as badly as could have been expected. She drew her curtains closed completely, fixing them in place with a charm for good measure, but didn’t dare cast anything to dampen the noise of the room. If Riddle (or _any_ of her roommates, for that matter) was going to be wandering about at night, she wanted to be able to hear him. She lay awake long after the boys fell silent. A discreet peek through the curtains (the right hand side, facing away from Riddle) revealed that those whose beds were visible—Nott, Avery, and Rosier—all slept with their curtains closed, even if Avery’s were sloppily drawn and revealed a sliver of darkness. The lanterns were not fully extinguished, but were certainly dimmed, brightening the room just enough for the residents to see if they should need to leave their beds for any reason. Eventually, she turned to _Hogwarts: A History_ , reading well into the early morning in an effort to settle her mind with the familiar pages. She had considered leaving the book behind—it wouldn’t be published for another couple of decades, and she would have to conceal it accordingly, along with a few other choice volumes she had thought too valuable to discard—but couldn’t bear to part with it when it had been one of her most faithful companions throughout the entirety of her school career. Eventually, she dropped off into an uneasy sleep. Tomorrow, Hermes Grangier’s life would truly begin.

***

Hermione jolted awake at nine minutes past six, despite not having nodded off until two or three in the morning. She felt surprisingly well-rested, all things considered, though unsurprisingly tense and edgy. Running a hand through her rumpled curls, and still feeling that moment of shock when her fingers came so quickly to the ends of the now much-shorter locks, she yawned widely, dropped the charm from her curtains, and emerged quietly into the room. The lanterns were still dimmed, and the curtains still closed on the other six beds.

Keeping noise to the barest minimum, she collected her uniform items and toiletries and made her way to the bathroom. With any luck, she could be dressed and gone before her classmates had even awoken. If she was punctual to breakfast, which started at seven, she could quickly have some toast, hopefully without company, and then disappear to the library until classes started at nine. Now that she’d encountered Riddle, she needed time alone to reconcile her past (future?) knowledge of him with the reality of the boy himself. As with anything, preparation was key.

The handle of the bathroom door swung inwards when she reached for it, making her start violently. Somehow _knowing_ who would be standing there, even before her mind had the chance to consciously process anything, she reluctantly met Riddle’s dark, impenetrable gaze. Despite the early hour, he was already immaculately attired in his uniform, once again looking down at her sorry, pyjama-clad scruffiness. His carefully-groomed hair was visibly damp from the shower, and she detected the faint, pleasant, soap-and-mint scent that typically accompanied morning ablutions. Given his firm belief in his own superiority—in his own words, he was ‘special’—she wondered if it irked him that he had to contend with body odour and halitosis just like every other teenaged boy. She couldn’t find it within herself to care, but the thought was amusing enough to bring a hint of warmth to the otherwise stiff smile on her face. “Morning, Grangier.” Riddle greeted her politely, but softly. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting? Our dorm-mates tend to be late risers, so it’s rare to bump into anyone this early in the morning.”

“Not at all, Riddle.” she said with a falsely pleasant expression, purposefully ignoring his earlier suggestion that she call him by his first name. There was a silence that was just one beat too long to be considered comfortable.

“I hope you slept well?” Riddle inquired, and there was the barest trace of amusement in the tilt of his mouth.

“As well as could be expected, thank you. I’m afraid that I no longer sleep as long or as soundly as I once did, courtesy of the situation at home.” She neglected to mention that ‘home’ was the same place, just more than five decades into the future. He nodded in response, his arresting face assuming an expression of understanding. She was struck, again, by what a competent actor he was, how very human he could make himself appear.

“I can only imagine.” he murmured lowly, positively oozing sympathy. She noted, with a certain wry amusement, that he failed to mention he spent every summer in poverty-stricken muggle London, and had thus been well-acquainted with much of the brutal reality of World War II. “I hope you’ll come to regard Hogwarts as your home.” he said, and she felt her expression soften with genuine fondness for the briefest of moments. Gryffindor or Slytherin, Hogwarts was indeed her home. It had been from the moment Minerva arrived on her doorstep to prove its existence, and the boy standing in front of her would grow into the man who would one day destroy it.

“If you’ll excuse me.” she muttered, tilting her head to indicate the bathroom. Riddle immediately stepped aside, leaving space for her to pass. She dashed through with ill-concealed relief, closing the door firmly and letting out a relieved sigh.

The process of getting ready was both eerily familiar and utterly foreign. Checking that her proper undergarments (custom leotard included) were all in place, Hermione pulled on a pair of dark boxer briefs. They were followed by a crisp white shirt, almost the same as the one she had worn in the 90s, tucked into a pair of neatly pressed charcoal trousers instead of her pleated school skirt. Black socks, a narrow black belt, and polished black shoes completed the ensemble on her lower half. The strangest part of all was winding the green-and-silver Slytherin tie around her neck where her red-and-gold Gryffindor colours ought to have sat. With Riddle’s impeccable uniform in mind, she dedicated an extra minute to the Windsor tie knot that he seemed to favour, more symmetrical and triangular than the four-in-hand she would generally use. She pulled on the finely-knit, vee-necked sweater vest that was standard issue, and debated whether or not to wear the blazer as well, given that the weather wasn’t excessively cold. The shoulder pads would definitely lend a touch more masculinity to her entirely unprepossessing physique, but perhaps it was best to look as small and weak as possible. Putting the blazer aside, she pulled only her black robe over the ensemble, satisfied that she looked suitably inconspicuous.

Having washed her face and brushed her teeth, she made a valiant effort at tackling her hair, being careful not to snap the teeth off her comb in the doing. Checking it in the mirror (it was still curly and riotously unpredictable), and satisfied that it at least didn’t look as if it had been slept on, she emerged from the bathroom in full Slytherin garb for the first time. It felt a little like going into battle; this uniform was Hermes’ armour, and he (she) was ready for the fight.

***

To her absolute dismay, Riddle was waiting for her. He was perched silently on his neatly-made bed and, though there were some mutters and rustlings emanating from behind Nott’s curtains, nobody else had yet awoken. She watched him carefully as she returned her pyjamas and toiletries to their proper places. “Heading to breakfast?” he asked smoothly, abruptly standing and subtly placing himself between Hermione and the door.

“Uh, yes, I suppose so.” she said, unable to devise a convincing alternative on the spot.

“I’ll show you the way.” he offered immediately, the very image of a responsible prefect.

“I, uh,” she silently cursed herself for stuttering, “I wouldn’t want you to put yourself out, Riddle. Truly, I’m sure you have more important things to do than,” she struggled momentarily, “babysitting.” If he noticed her cringe, he was too polite to say so.

“It’s no trouble.” his smile would have been attractive, in other circumstances. “It’s a big castle, easy to get lost until you find your way around, and it’s the very least I can do, given that I was unable to welcome you properly at the feast last night.” She forced a weak smile in response.

“If you insist, then I’m sure I’m very grateful for the help.” He held the door open for her, the paragon of good manners, and she reluctantly moved through the common room with Riddle trailing just behind her. As they emerged into the dungeon corridor, she hung back a little, allowing him to take the lead. It felt utterly ridiculous to let him guide her when she knew perfectly well where she was going, but it was all part of the act. They walked in silence for some time.

“What’s your first class for the day?” Riddle asked politely.

“Double Charms,” she answered immediately, having already set about memorising her timetable.

“Riddle.” a girl’s voice rang down the hall (they were now out of the dungeons and not far from the dining hall). “An updated version of the patrol roster, following last night’s meeting.” She had thick blonde hair in a chignon, hazel eyes, and a nose that was just a little too long for her open, pleasant face. A Gryffindor tie indicated her house affiliation, and her badge proudly proclaimed her Head Girl. Hermione couldn’t help the faintest flicker of jealousy: she had coveted that badge for years.

“Thank you, Miss Harris.” Riddle said, his tone full of warm gratitude.

“Not a worry, Riddle.” the girl beamed back. “And _you_ ,” she turned to Hermione, “must be Mister Grangier. Welcome! I’m sure your house prefects, especially Riddle here, will do everything in their power to help you settle in, but if you ever need my help, just say the word.”

“I will, thank you, Miss…?”

“Euphemia Harris. I’d better get going, lots of rosters to deliver, but enjoy your first day, Grangier, and I’ll catch you later, Riddle.” With a cheerful smile and a little wave, she bounced away.

“Our Head Girl.” Riddle told Hermione. “A Gryffindor, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Is the Head Boy also from Gryffindor?” Hermione inquired, unable to resist.

“Hufflepuff.” he said, and she almost laughed at his obvious incredulity and distaste. They finally reached the Great Hall, and she rushed over to the Slytherin table without making much effort to conceal her relief. Unfortunately it had just gone seven, and there were so few people at breakfast that Riddle seated himself directly opposite her anyway. She took some toast and mushrooms, watching him surreptitiously. He served himself elegantly—toast, tomatoes, scrambled egg, and a sausage—everything in moderate portions, and transferred from the communal platter to his plate without so much as a crumb going astray. Orange juice and coffee (black, half a sugar) completed the meal. He offered her the French press that he had poured from, but she politely declined, helping herself to a cup of tea from one of the many teapots available on the table. “Which class are you most looking forward to?” Riddle asked pleasantly, every part of his face expressing mannerly interest in her response.

“I’ve always enjoyed Charms,” she said, thinking of Professor Flitwick, “and Arithmancy.”

“Oh, you’re taking Arithmancy,” he observed rhetorically. “I took the course at OWL level, but I let it drop this year. I prefer Divination, after all, and the two subjects essentially aim to accomplish the same thing through different means.” Hermione couldn’t quite contain a derisive little scoffing sound—Divination was _still_ a sore spot for her.

“Please!” she snapped, an unfortunate degree of scorn lacing the word. “You can’t tell me that you _honestly_ believe that Divination can yield results as reliable as those produced by Arithmancy.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Riddle inquired, and despite the trace of amusement in his expression, Hermione thought she had surprised him.

“At the most basic level,” she replied, “Arithmancy is performed in line with mathematical method, and Divination is not. The first subject relies on numbers and calculations, has been tested as objectively as possible, and rests on a set of permanently allocated values. The second is based entirely on supposition; its only ‘method’ lies in ascribing arbitrary meaning to anything convenient so that it can establish false parallels between unrelated phenomena, such as tea leaves and the future of humanity.”

“Do you truly believe that the phenomena Divination unites are unrelated?” he asked. While he remained perfectly civil, she fancied that there was something a little bit challenging in his voice. “Everything utilised in Divination is strongly linked to human events in some way, whether it’s the body itself that’s read, as in palmistry, or a product or object mediated by the body, such as the tea in tessomancy, which the subject needs to drink. As a magical being capable of accidental and wandless magic, surely it’s not difficult for you to imagine that day-to-day activities might impart a degree of latent magic, and thereby significance, into unexpected media?”

“I have no doubt that we instil things with something of our magical essence when we interact with them. It’s not the link between divinatory portents and human experience that I’m challenging, but the transient assumptions about the nature of that link. Taking your tessomancy example, the allocation of meaning is wholly subjective. Firstly, there’s the absolutely random assignation of certain outcomes to certain symbols: the Grim means death, oh no; the sun means happiness, how original; and so on and so forth. Secondly, there’s the bias of the interpreter. Given that _soggy tea leaves_ don’t render a particularly clear image to begin with, it’s entirely up to the reader as to whether a specific lump of tannic residue is an acorn signifying an unexpected windfall, or a club denoting an unexpected attack. An important distinction, I think you’ll agree, and one that would, in this context, be completely contingent upon the agenda of the person doing the reading, not at all _related_ to the subject, but rather informed almost exclusively by the reader’s _attitude_ towards the subject.”

“The same argument could be levelled at Arithmancy.” Riddle said. “At the introductory level, it relies on a supposed equivalence between certain letters and certain numbers.”

“That may be true, but the equivalence is static. At the most reductive level, a two is always equivalent to a B, K, or T.”

“Just as a sun is always equivalent to happiness, or a Grim to death.”

“The difference being,” she said, exasperated, “that you can’t read a two as anything _but_ a two.”

“Correct, but that doesn’t necessarily preclude intuition from the Arithmantic process. Arithmancy _is_ fundamentally interpretative: it depends upon the arithmancer’s inclusion of the right factors and their reading of the results, not just their capacity to correctly perform the calculations and conversions. As the complexity of the problem escalates, so does the dependency on the insight of the person managing the equation.”

“The fact remains, Riddle, that regardless of whether an arithmancer chooses the correct variables or not, provided they calculate and transcribe correctly, they will always come to the proper answer _for that problem_. If they choose the wrong problem to answer, then that’s hardly the fault of the discipline. Divination, on the other hand, doesn’t pose a particular problem, and as such there is no correct answer. It’s barely, and only occasionally, better than random.”

“I might be persuaded to agree, in many cases,” he acquiesced, and she had no doubt whatsoever that he didn’t agree with her at all, “but there are true prophecies, spoken by true seers. Do you regard their abilities as ‘barely better than random’?”

“Not at all,” she said, “but there’s a huge difference between actual prophecy and day-to-day divination.” Hermione allowed herself a bit of a smirk. “Have you ever met a true seer, Riddle?” She waited a moment, and he shook his head, seemingly bemused as to where she was going with the question. “I have.” she told him, and though his face remained neutral, the sudden flicker of interest in his eyes was unmistakable. She suspected it was the first honest expression she’d seen from him.

“Where? What was their name?” he asked, seemingly unable to help himself.

“It hardly matters.” Hermione waved the question away. “She was a seer, a _true_ seer, and do you know how many _genuine_ prophecies she made in her lifetime?” He shook his head immediately, impatient for the answer and obviously not wanting to be impeded by any more rhetorical questions.

“Two, Riddle. She lived to be as old as…” Hermione let her eyes stray to the head table “…perhaps a little older than that auburn-haired professor in the bright robes?” Riddle’s face quickly smoothed over, returning to careful neutrality as she indicated Dumbledore. “In all that time, she made _two_ proper prophecies. The rest of her predictions were just guesswork—sometimes lucky, sometimes not—and hippogriff shit.” she bit out sharply. Riddle’s eyebrows jumped slightly at the profanity. “Also, and you’ll have to forgive my presumption, seeing as I know so little of you, she doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who would have inspired admiration from someone as accomplished as yourself.” She figured that a smidgen of flattery wouldn’t go astray; Riddle was a supreme egoist.

“Any personal shortcomings aside,” he said, “how can you disregard Divination as a discipline when you’ve seen that authentic foresight exists? How can you dismiss her other forecasts, when you know she had true power?”

“As she once said herself, the inner eye does not see upon command. It follows that the vast majority of divination is nothing more than chicanery.”

“What of her prophecies?”

“Oh, they did come true, after a fashion. Although, given that a prophecy relies on the presence of a witness, someone to make the prophecy _to_ , I’ve always wondered whether they might be self-fulfilling to some degree. If the witness never heard the prophecy, _would_ it come true? Or does the witness’s knowledge influence events to ensure that the prediction comes about? Even having watched two prophecies play out, I’m not sure.”

“What did the prophecies concern? How were they fulfilled?”

“I won’t bore you with the details—” Hermione started, but then paused to reconsider. The prophecy concerning Harry and Voldemort wouldn’t be made for almost fifty years, by which time she would most likely already be dead, having made some fatal misstep. Furthermore, if she managed to have a sufficiently strong influence on the timeline, the prophecy might never be made, or Severus Snape might never hear it, or any number of other factors could prevent it from occurring as it had the first time around. That being the case, could she use their current conversation as a teaching moment? Could she somehow undermine Riddle’s obvious faith in Divination, on the off chance that, if events did play out the same way, he might _not_ accept the words of the prophecy as an inevitable truth? She made a split-second decision, reasoning that she would never have a better moment than in the context of their current conversation. “In brief, the more interesting of the two concerned a grown wizard—a powerful one—and a baby. The prophecy said that neither could live while the other survived. The wizard tried to kill the baby, failed, and ended up inadvertently destroying himself. Until he was attacked by the wizard, the baby was entirely unremarkable. If it hadn’t been for the prophecy, the wizard would probably never have known that he existed, let alone given him any special attention. His knowledge of the prophecy meant that he brought the events about himself, just not in the way he expected.” She trailed off a little at the end, halfway lost in thought. True, it wasn’t exactly an exhaustive description of what had happened, but it wasn’t _dis_ honest either. Voldemort _had_ destroyed himself—his body, at least—and Riddle didn’t need to know the finer details, such as his own eventual victory. She glanced up at the boy opposite, and found him watching her with unusually rapt attention, though he was still making every effort to appear only passingly interested. She hoped that she hadn’t overplayed her hand too soon, and forced a small grin and a bit of a chuckle. “Sorry, Riddle. Lost in thought. Essence of the story being, if you ever find yourself mixed up in a prophecy,” she laughed as if the very thought was utterly ridiculous, “then perhaps don’t take the seer’s word as law.” He seemed to rally, giving a charming smile in response to her little ‘joke’.

“I’ll keep that in mind, should the situation ever arise.” he said with a quiet laugh, and the tension of the conversation dissipated. “Returning to the topic of Divination, though, what’s your stance on astrology?” His face, once more, was a picture of courteous inquiry. “The movement of the celestial bodies dictates the very passage of time that affects us; surely you don’t mean to suggest that you consider _time_ irrelevant to people and events?” His question made her spine prickle—if only he knew precisely _how_ relevant time was to every facet of her current existence—but she rolled her eyes nevertheless.

“Of course I realise that the order of the world relies on time. Without time, past, present and future would be non-existent concepts, and Arithmancy rests on those just as much as Divination. However, I think you’re mistaking _astrology_ for _astronomy_. As I’m sure you’re already aware, they are vastly different subjects. The movement of the planets is one thing; if divination ‘predicts’ a high tide based on changes in the moon, I can accept that. Pretending that the presence of Jupiter in my second house is going to have an influence over my daily routine or work ethic this year? Seems a little far-fetched, if you ask me.” she finished sweetly.

“I take it we shan’t be seeing you in Divination, then?” He looked almost amused.

“Assuredly not.”

“It’s rather funny.” he said. “For all your condemnation and lack of faith in astrology, and Divination more generally, I’d swear you’re a Virgo: practical, analytical, organised, and goal-oriented, but hyper-critical, serious, conservative, and inflexible.” Hermione narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, now certain that his expression had, indeed, been expressing amusement at her expense.

“Very good, Riddle.” she replied, leaning towards him slightly, and lowering her voice. “Is it just divinatory intuition that brought you to this conclusion? Or was it the birth date noted on the information sheet that you undoubtedly sighted yesterday evening when you spoke to our Head of House?” He laughed again, tilting his head back slightly to display his faultless teeth and elegant profile to their best advantage.

“Guilty as charged, Grangier. I do hope I haven’t caused any offense.”

“Not at all.” she smiled back, feeling as if her face might crack under the strain. Arranging her bag over her shoulder, she prepared to leave. He moved as though to accompany her, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Please, don’t trouble yourself. I’m sure I can find a bathroom without too much difficulty.” He gave a gracious nod, accepting her desire for privacy. She stood, freeing her legs from the bench so that she could escape as quickly as possible, but unable to resist the opportunity to take one last swipe at him before she went. “If I didn’t know any better, _Tom_ ,” she threw at him over her shoulder, laying the cosy familiarity on thick, “I’d say you were a Capricorn: responsible, disciplined, independent, and self-controlled, but cold, unforgiving, materialistic, and domineering.” She knew bloody well that he was a Capricorn, of course, but _he_ didn’t know that she knew, nor would he be able to conceive of any way she might have discovered that information overnight. Furthermore, she made a special effort to highlight the characteristics that she believed were the best fit to what she already knew of his personality. _Intuition indeed, smartarse_ , she thought with petty satisfaction, relishing the momentary silence that her comment had bought her. “See you in class.” she said lightly, and left the Great Hall as quickly as she could, nodding briefly at Nott when she passed him in the doorway. It wasn’t until she reached the library that she realised she had rather _enjoyed_ her debate with Riddle, and that she had never once managed such a sustained academic argument with her classmates in her own time.


	3. Grievous Bodily Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the great response to this story so far - I am honestly delighted that you're enjoying it, and genuinely appreciate the kudos and the comments. ^_^ This will likely be the last update that's 'ahead of schedule', as this was the last chapter I had fully drafted. :) While I have other sections in progress, I like a fairly solid chapter (around the 5k word mark), so they definitely need a bit more work. Also, I am still figuring things out (in terms of tagging, plot details, etc.), and wanted to let everyone know that I will likely update the tags as this story progresses. Hope you enjoy!

III. Grievous Bodily Charm

_“It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”_ – Barbara Kingsolver

She was pleased to note that the classroom was largely empty. Only two desks were occupied, side by side in the second row, a Hufflepuff girl at each of them. They glanced at Hermione as she entered, each offering her a tentative smile which she did her best to return with sufficient warmth. After whispering between themselves for another moment, and clearly coming to some sort of decision, the nearest of the two girls turned back to Hermione. “Hello.” the Hufflepuff began, somewhat hesitantly, and Hermione tried to look encouraging. “We just wanted to say, we were very sorry to hear at the feast that you had to move here because things were so bad at home, but welcome, anyway, and we hope you’ll like it here.” The girl’s eyes were full of a mix of sympathy and caution, and Hermione couldn’t help but be affected by the obvious sincerity behind the wish for her happiness. She wondered if a single one of her housemates had spared a thought for the wellbeing of the supposed survivor in their midst, and had to swallow hard to suppress a surge of feeling.

“Oh, I’m, um, that is,” she stuttered helplessly, “thank you. It’s, um, it’s not so easy, you know, such a big change, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Her smile felt slightly pained. “The other guys in my dorm have been really,” she paused for the briefest second, seeking the right word, “inclusive.”

“The Slytherin boys from our year have always been pretty close.” the other Hufflepuff girl offered suddenly, beaming. “I’m sure you’ll be part of the group in no time.” Her hair was short, black, and curly, though the curls were smooth and bouncy, not riotous like Hermione’s own. She wore a bright yellow alice band, with a bow that reminded Hermione distressingly of Dolores Umbridge, and had a sweet round face and bright brown eyes. She brought to mind the animated Snow White from the Disney movies Hermione had watched as a child, a thought that made her grin a bit. “I’m Paula,” the girl indicated herself, “this is Heather,” a wave at the blonde who had spoken first, “and you’re…Herman, was it?”

“Hermes.” Hermione replied quickly. “Nice to meet you, Paula, Heather.” she nodded at the blonde, whose straw-coloured hair was confined to two messy plaits, and whose milky complexion was liberally dusted with freckles. She wasn’t as pretty as Paula in the conventional sense, but she was tall and fit-looking, with eyes that crinkled warmly when she smiled. “Would you mind if I sat here?” Hermione indicated the third seat in the row, next to theirs. They couldn’t quite conceal their surprise, but quickly assured her that she was more than welcome, so she sat down and prepared for class.

Students continued to trickle into the room: a pair of Hufflepuff boys with broad smiles for Paula and Heather and a friendly nod towards Hermione, who left a vacant space beside her, but seated themselves in the same row; a gaggle of Slytherin girls (five, to be precise), who all sat in a single row; another group of Hufflepuffs, four girls and two boys; and finally Riddle and his entourage, two minutes before class was scheduled to start. Riddle swept in, the others following with slavishly respectful obedience, and seated himself in the front row. With a few rolled eyes (but sensibly no vocal dissent), Avery, Lestrange, Nott, and Rosier sat around him. Hermione noted, with interest, that Mulciber wasn’t with them. Perhaps he didn’t take Charms. When he spotted her sitting with the Hufflepuffs, Avery indicated the empty seat beside him and attempted to catch her eye, but she pretended not to notice. She didn’t _have_ to sit with them, after all.

A moment later, the door was flung in again, and a tall, thin man entered. His brown hair was distinctly sparse on top, his expression severe, and he wore square-rimmed spectacles with lenses so thick that his eyes looked at least half as large again as they probably were. His abnormally magnified irises were blue and sharp, and his navy robes were very tidy but clearly well-worn. “Good morning, everyone.” he greeted them, his thin mouth relaxing into a half smile as he glanced about the room. “Good holidays?” There was a general mutter of assent, and his eyes, which had been scanning the students before him, passed over Hermione before darting back, seemingly startled. “You must be the new boy.” he said without inflection, leaving her confused as to whether or not it was a question. To be on the safe side, she figured she had better answer.

“Yes, sir. Hermes Grangier.”

“Very good.” he replied, trailing off a little. “I understand your circumstances have been less than desirable, Grangier, but I presume you took Charms at the OWL level?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, good. Well, I imagine your results must have been sufficient, if Armando—pardon me, everyone, Headmaster Dippett—allowed you to enrol. Still, extenuating circumstances and all that, do let me know if you need extra help with any of the spells, it might be a struggle for you to keep up at times, and stay a minute after class this morning, if you would.” His way of speaking was oddly soft and rambling; devoid of pauses long enough to allow interjection, but lacking any particular feeling behind the words.

“Yes, sir.” she said again.

“Very well, class.” his eyes snapped abruptly upwards. “Here you are, sixth year at last, OWLs out of the way, and aren’t we all thankful for that, but NEWTs coming up, and nice to see so many of you still here. No point beating around the bush, biggest aspect of NEWT level study is non-verbal spells, so we might as well get back into it; no new spells, I don’t think, perhaps revisiting some charms we already know, and see if we can get you performing those non-verbally, new material a bit later. Try a levitating charm first, and if anyone succeeds they can move to _engorgio_ and _reducio_ , then _accio_ and _depulso_ , same deal.” He continued to mutter, almost to himself, as he waved his wand and sent a small cushion drifting out to each desk. “Expect erratic results, if you get a result at all, but do _try_ not to hurt each other. Now take your cushions and _listen_.” They all straightened in their seats and looked to him.

“Non-verbal magic,” he began, “is no different to the magic you already know in terms of power, incantation, or effect. The only difference is the amount of focus required; until now, you’ve always used a spoken incantation to focus your energy, et cetera, and now you’ll no longer have that security blanket, and it’s not just a matter of shouting the incantation in your head, though that’s certainly a part of it. I’d suggest you start by casting the spell verbally, just to remind yourself of the movement, feeling of the spell, and the incantation, wand movement being _very_ important when you’re not incanting out loud, and then trying to replicate all of those _without_ actually saying the word. Imagine casting the spell verbally, and just when the word is about to breach your lips, stop yourself from uttering it, but leave all your other physical and mental processes as similar as you can— _don’t_ just try whispering, Avery, I can _see_ you—and see how you go. It’s largely a matter of practise, so you may as well start now, and just raise your hand if you have any problems or questions, and you’re free to help each other, so begin whenever you’re ready.” Hermione turned, quizzically, to Heather.

“Is Professor…?” she trailed off, the slightly eccentric man having failed to introduce himself by name.

“Professor Gastrell.” Heather whispered in response. “He’s our head of house in Hufflepuff.”

“Is he always…like this?” Hermione said under her breath, and she saw Heather smother a bit of a giggle as she nodded.

“Well done, Mister Riddle.” Gastrell’s voice drifted from the front of the room. “Take five points for Slytherin and carry on.” If the cushion hovering in front of him was any indication, Riddle had successfully performed the charm. Not surprising, Hermione ruminated, given that he was probably more than capable of performing the cruciatus curse non-verbally at this point.

“Don’t let the odd manners fool you.” Heather said softly. “He’d do anything for any of the students here, even if you’re not from his house.” The Professor strayed closer, and they cut off their conversation, turning their attention to their cushions. Hermione swished and flicked her wand, and her cushion floated effortlessly into the air. She’d been using non-verbal spells for several years, after all, and could have performed the levitating charm in her sleep, with words or without.

“Very well done, Mister Grangier.” Professor Gastrell said mildly, as he wandered towards the back of the room. Hermione felt, rather than saw, the glances of her fellow Slytherins. “You may proceed to engorging and reducing.”

“How did you do that?” Paula asked, leaning around Heather and giving Hermione an obviously impressed look.

“Oh, it’s really not as hard as it seems.” she assured them. “Just make sure your wand movement is really clear, and then focus on what you want to happen. I’ve always thought that intent is the biggest part of non-verbal magic, so you really have to make sure that your primary intention at the moment that you cast is for the cushion to move.”

“Can you show us?” Heather asked.

“Oh, um, sure.” Hermione muttered. _Engorgio_ , she thought, with a twirl of her wand, and the cushion immediately grew to five or six times its usual size, leaving the Hufflepuff girls open-mouthed with astonishment. “See? Easy.” she smiled at them.

“Very good, Mister Grangier.” Gastrell appeared over her shoulder, making her jump. “If you don’t mind, I’ll watch you attempt the reducing charm.” A classroom full of faces swivelled in their direction as the Professor stood in front of Hermione’s desk expectantly.

“Of course, sir.” she said, silently performing the countercharm and watching the cushion shrink to its original dimensions. Gastrell’s eyes, already ludicrously enlarged courtesy of his spectacles, widened slightly.

“Another ten points to Slytherin.” he muttered. “Go on, Grangier, summoning and banishing charms now, feel free to stand further from your desk if you feel you need the space.” Directing an encouraging smile at Heather and Paula, Hermione moved to the wall, noting that Riddle was doing the same, apparently having successfully enlarged and reduced his cushion. With a wave of her wand, and a silent _accio_ , Hermione’s cushion soared into her outstretched hand. Tossing it lightly into the air, she wordlessly cast _depulso_ and sent it flying back across the room, where it thumped quietly to a halt on the surface of her desk.

When double Charms finally ended (Hermione had been comfortably able to perform every spell non-verbally, and neglected to mention she could probably perform most of them wandlessly as well), she found herself casually flanked by the tall bodies of Lestrange and Avery. “Morgana’s tits, Grangier.” Avery addressed her with a grin. “Wherever did you learn non-verbal magic?”

“Oh.” Hermione glanced anxiously up at each of their faces. “Um, it was no big deal. You just pick these things up, I suppose. Especially when your, um, circumstances aren’t what you’d wish.” She glanced down momentarily, thinning her mouth grimly, and Avery’s face fell. “Besides,” she said, forcing a lighter tone and a bit of a smile, “Charms has always been one of my best subjects.”

“You should have sat with us.” Lestrange interjected, looking down his nose at her.

“I was already sitting when you arrived.” she muttered in response.

“You could have moved, then.”

“What Rainier _means_ to say,” Avery hastily cut in, glancing sharply at Lestrange, “is that you’re one of us now. As such, it would be usual for you to sit with us. Obviously things happen, and people fight, but even in that case, you’d generally sit with the girls from our house, or perhaps the boys from Ravenclaw. Slytherin and Ravenclaw have always had a bit of an unspoken alliance, and the same is true of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.”

“I was told that the school values inter-house unity.” Hermione said, raising her eyebrows.

“Of course.” Avery smirked back, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Inter-house unity is a core Hogwarts value. However, you’ll find that we Slytherins, in particular, have to stick together. The absolute truth is that the other houses look down on us a bit, because the classic Slytherin traits are things like cunning and ambition, and even some of the professors aren’t necessarily fair in their treatment of us. We’ve got to look out for our fellow snakes.” he finished with a wink. Hermione nodded, trying to disguise her incredulity. Wandless magic aside, Avery clearly thought she was stupid if he expected her to fall for the ‘poor, misunderstood Slytherin’ routine. Was it any wonder the other houses regarded Slytherin with suspicion? _Their_ founders hadn’t built a secret chamber and hidden a bloody basilisk inside it, for Merlin’s sake.

“Right.” she said, trying to play along. “I didn’t realise. I hope I haven’t caused any offense?”

“Course not.” Avery assured her. “You weren’t to know. We’re glad to have you, though. With your points from Charms added to Tom’s, the other houses don’t stand a chance at the cup this year.” Keen to keep him talking, Hermione proceeded to interrogate him about the house cup, keeping both boys occupied with questions until Lestrange excused himself to go to Divination. Sadly, Avery didn’t take Divination, and instead insisted on ‘showing her to the library’ while she pretended to be grateful for his help. She wondered whether Riddle had ordered his minions to accompany her everywhere.

Spare period passed without incident, aside from Avery’s buoyant but unwelcome presence, and was followed by single Potions with the Ravenclaws. One of the most notable things about the Hogwarts of the 1940s was the substantially higher number of students. In Hermione’s time, all the NEWT courses had combined all four houses, as the numbers were so low. She couldn’t tell whether students were just higher achieving in the earlier time, or whether the wars had actually led to a reduced population, but she felt that the second option was the more likely of the two, as even the Great Hall had seemed rather full during the welcome feast. It appeared that, in Riddle’s time, only elective subjects combined the four houses, with core subjects (Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, Potions, History of Magic, DADA, and Astronomy) containing only two houses at a time. As she made her way to the dungeons, Hermione found herself speculating over whether Professor Slughorn had changed his lesson plans at all in half a century, and whether he had been the same backslapping social climber all his life.

***

“Come in, come in!” Slughorn’s cheerful, loud voice rang about the classroom as they entered. Hermione glanced at him, and struggled to repress a smile at the familiar face. Though substantially younger, there was no mistaking Horace’s round belly and carefully groomed moustache. Furthermore, despite his many shortcomings and his rampant favouritism, the man had always been devoid of malice, and typically treated all his students well. Hermione glanced around for a quick head count: herself, Riddle, Nott, Lestrange, two Slytherin girls, and two boys and two girls from Ravenclaw. It made sense that Slytherin boys would dominate, as she strongly suspected they were all members of the Slug Club, and that Slughorn was eager to keep them around so that he could seize whatever advantages their names and talent might have offered. “Mister Grangier!” the man boomed from only a foot behind her, startling her so badly that she almost knocked into a desk. “Welcome to my classroom! I trust your first day is going well?” Hermione gave a vague affirmative, but Slughorn had already turned away. “Ah, Tom, m’boy!” The delight in the man’s voice was unmistakable as he greeted Riddle, and Riddle himself smiled a little, casting his eyes down in a sickeningly perfect mix of pleasure and self-effacement. “No doubt ready to top the class again at NEWT level.”

“I wouldn’t say that, sir.” Riddle replied modestly, with just a touch of a cheeky grin that had Slughorn practically melting.

“Oh, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Tom—you’re too modest, dear boy. I know I’m not alone in imagining that your NEWT results will be some of the highest the school has ever seen, and of course I expect your Potions grade to be the highest of all. Although,” Slughorn waved a cautionary finger, the gesture at odds with his gleeful expression, “it looks as though you’ll have some competition this year. I was fortunate enough to look over Mister Grangier’s OWL results earlier today.” With that, and delivering a conspicuous wink, Slughorn waddled to the front of the room. Hermione did her best to avoid Riddle’s penetrating regard.

“Alright, everyone, alright.” Slughorn began, seemingly ignoring the fact that they were already silent. “Welcome to Potions at the NEWT level, and well done to you all on your excellent OWL scores. Just a single period today, so we won’t have time for brewing, but I thought you’d like to take a look at some rather special potions I’ve put together. You won’t have brewed these yourselves, of course, but you should be able to recognise them, I’d think.” Hermione almost rolled her eyes—clearly the syllabus _hadn’t_ changed in fifty years. “Can anyone tell me what this is?” He indicated a cauldron of Veritaserum, and Hermione’s hand was in the air before she could stop herself. It was, indeed, difficult to break the habit of a lifetime.

“Mister Grangier?”

“Veritaserum, sir. It’s a colourless, odourless potion that forces the drinker to tell the truth.”

“Very good, very good. And this?” Hermione’s hand was halfway up before she forced it back to her side, firmly reminding herself that she was supposed to let Riddle retain top spot in Potions and DADA. “Yes, Tom?”

“Polyjuice potion, sir. It allows the drinker to take the form of another person, but requires the addition of an ingredient derived from the body of the person whose form you’re trying to adopt. Hair, usually.”

“Excellent!” Slughorn was clearly thrilled as he moved to the third cauldron. He looked hopefully at Riddle, clearly oblivious to the boy’s suddenly tense jaw as the steam of the potion coiled tellingly in the air. Hermione, realising that Riddle had no intention of speaking, raised her hand more slowly, and Slughorn nodded to indicate that she should speak.

“The most powerful love potion in the world, sir: Amortentia. It can’t create real love, of course—no potion can—but it does cause a powerful infatuation. You can recognise it by the spiralling steam and the pearlescent shine, but it also smells different to each person, depending on what they find most attractive.”

“Very well done, Mister Grangier, take ten points for Slytherin.”

“Sir,” a girl’s voice interrupted, and Hermione saw that it belonged to a blonde Ravenclaw, “may we smell it? The Amortentia?”

Slughorn, clearly delighted by the question (Hermione suspected he had been waiting for it), gave a good-natured chortle. “I don’t see what the harm could be, Miss O’Reilly. Step up, everyone. A neat line, now—you don’t want to muddy the scent by standing too close to anyone else. Far be it from your old Potions professor to stand in the way of true love!” Still chuckling fondly, he stepped back from the cauldron as a number of the girls subtly squabbled for a place at the front of the line. The boys were, unsurprisingly, slower, though Lestrange seemed keen enough. Hermione pondered, with a smothered snort of amusement, whether it was possible to smell _yourself_ in Amortentia.

When Hermione reached the front of the line, she took a cursory whiff of the potion. She had smelled Amortentia before, of course, but nobody else needed to know that. The first thing that hit her was the new parchment smell, something she had always aligned with research, books, good grades, and academic success. The cut-grass note was still potent, too, reminding her of watching Harry and Ron and Ginny play Quidditch, of de-gnoming at the Burrow, and of summer afternoons as a child, when her mum had read to her in the garden while her dad made lemonade and hovered nearby pretending he wasn’t enjoying the stories as much as his daughter. The spearmint toothpaste smelled milder than it had been, but still noticeable. She breathed in again, trying to figure out what was _different_ , when the realisation hit her like a stunning spell. The clean, citrusy aroma that she associated with Ron’s hair was gone. It only made sense, she rationalised with a ragged exhale, but it still made her stomach twist and her knees tremble. Ron was a beloved piece of her past—he was still there, in the cut-grass scent with Harry and Ginny and Molly and all the others—but he could scarcely be a part of her romantic future. Not in this world, where he didn’t yet exist. Instead of the light, sunny scent that brought to mind red hair and freckles, the Amortentia gave off something warm, earthy, and slightly bittersweet. Blinking hard and gritting her teeth, she wrenched herself away from the desk, making space for Riddle and a striking blue-eyed Ravenclaw boy.

Riddle barely paused over the cauldron, taking the barest hint of a breath through pinched nostrils before retreating to his seat. She wondered whether he smelled anything at all. The Ravenclaw—who really was quite startlingly handsome, with blond hair falling about his shoulders, and eyes that were almost unnaturally blue—made a speculative face before meandering back to his seat. He sat down next to another Ravenclaw girl, not the one who had initially asked about the Amortentia, and Hermione did a double-take at the resemblance. Unmistakably twins, both were tall and willowy. With their fine, fair hair like corn silk, and their cerulean eyes, they looked rather like fairies.

“Who are the twins?” she asked Nott, unwilling to ask Lestrange or Riddle.

“Auberon and Xanthe Lovegood. They’re nice enough, but both a little…odd.” Nott glanced up from his textbook, casting a suddenly assessing look at the girl, Xanthe, before his eyes darted back to Hermione. “She’s unattached, though, if that’s what you’re asking. They’re not a very traditional family, but nobody would blame you for being interested. Strange or not, she’s certainly pretty, and they _are_ purebloods, for all that they’re unconventional. It could prove an advantageous courtship.”

Hermione sputtered and blushed, her cheeks burning. “No, that is, I wasn’t, um, that’s not what I was getting at.”

“Already spoken for?” Nott inquired casually, and she could hardly believe that he was discussing betrothals and marriages so calmly.

“What? No!” she exclaimed, unable to comprehend how _this_ could be a topic of interest to boys of fifteen or sixteen. Her startled splutter had attracted the attention of Riddle, but fortunately Slughorn started to speak and she was spared further comment.

***

Lunch passed uneventfully; she squeezed herself into a space between Alphard Black and Mulciber, relying on the latter’s massive frame to protect her from the others. The afternoon was spent in double Runes. Mercifully, Riddle and Nott were the only other Slytherin boys enrolled in the subject, and Nott was sitting in the second seat of a row when she arrived, so Hermione hastily took the vacant place at the end to ensure that she wouldn’t have to sit beside Riddle.

Throughout the lesson, Hermione gnawed on her thumbnail and fretted over her earlier behaviour. Between spellcasting in Charms, Slughorn’s lecture, Avery’s prattle, and lunch, it was the first time since classes had started that she’d had a moment of relative quiet to sit and think. She had, of course, had an hour’s privacy in the library between breakfast and Charms, but she had still been riding the ludicrous high of her Capricorn remark, instead of thinking through its repercussions. _Fool_ , she scolded herself internally, _debating magical theory and giving him lip about his star sign_. Honestly, it was as if she _wanted_ to be found out.

Riddle had been quiet all day, though perfectly civil, and it was impossible to tell whether he was offended, intrigued, or simply oblivious to her presence. Despite the air of humility that he carried about with him—and she said _carried_ , because she suspected he was capable of whipping it on and off as quickly as he might his blazer—Riddle obviously had most of the school eating out of his palm. His posse moved around him like helpless little moons orbiting a planet, quite unable to escape his gravitational field even if they’d wanted to, and she had no reason to suspect they did. Slughorn clearly thought the sun shone out of Riddle’s perfectly-formed (she had, regrettably, noticed) posterior. Professor Gastrell was a little hard to read, but Riddle was obviously a talented Charms student, and there was no reason why the head of Hufflepuff wouldn’t look kindly upon the gifted orphan and future Head Boy. The Ancient Runes professor, Phoenicia Thorne, beamed at Riddle every time he opened his mouth. She was a tall, muscular woman whose elaborately-braided, ash-blonde hair was streaked with grey, whose steely-blue eyes were keen, and who was lavishly adorned with metal jewellery. While Hermione thought that Professor Thorne’s obvious approval of Riddle _slightly_ overstepped the bounds of professorial propriety, she could see why the woman barely even bothered to glance around the room for other raised hands. Riddle was handsome, polite, attentive, clever, and had clearly done the work. He hung on every word that the professors uttered, always had the right answer waiting on the tip of his tongue, and yet it never quite seemed as though he was showing off. Hermione couldn’t help but feel a little resentful at how obviously everyone _admired_ him. If _she_ had been the object of such obvious veneration from her professors (and she frequently had been), she would have been (again, had been) regarded as a know-it-all, and a jumped-up mudblood, and insufferable, and conceited. If it was Tom Riddle, however, he was talented, and gifted, and humble, and perfect. How any one person could be in possession of such abundant natural gifts was both enviable and appalling—surely it was sufficient to be good-looking _or_ brilliant _or_ charming, rather than all three.

Hermione herself had always been clever, and had been told so with such regularity that she had never doubted it, even as a comparatively young child. She had realised, of course, that she wasn’t as likeable as many of her classmates. She was too obnoxiously smart, too eager to display her knowledge, and too openly rule-abiding (on the surface, at least) for most people to look at her with genuine fondness, or to take her into their confidence. Harry and Ron had been the exceptions, and she had gradually found liking and acceptance within her Hogwarts cohort, but facts were facts: unless she was helping them with their homework, people liked her _despite_ her most defining qualities, not _because_ of them. She didn’t inspire admiration and wide-eyed awe like noble, self-sacrificing Harry; her crimes weren’t forgotten and forgiven like those of easy-going, lackadaisical Ron. Similarly, she had never been particularly noted for her physical appearance, outside of moments like the Yule Ball. While she wasn’t a troll, she didn’t have Lavender’s buxom, girl-next-door charm, or Parvati’s striking beauty, or even Ginny’s feminine sort of athleticism. In terms of physical beauty, she was an Acceptable: largely unremarkable, but definitely a pass, and, with a bit of effort, capable of rising to an Exceeds Expectations.

Furthermore, none of those home truths had ever really bothered Hermione. Affirmation from her parents, and later her sense of self-assurance, had eventually convinced her not to waste her time on people who hated her for her intellect. Those who mind don’t matter, her dad had used to say, and those who matter won’t mind. Likewise, she had never been troubled by the fact that she wasn’t a raving beauty. She was more than capable of looking nice, but she had never _really_ regarded prettiness as important when compared to something like intelligence. In fact (and the acknowledgement was coloured with a little bit of guilt), she may even have looked down somewhat at those whose best quality was their physical appearance. She had simply accepted that you couldn’t have it all. Ron, for example, was agreeable, in a genial, _laissez-faire_ way that meant he got along with almost everyone. Save Malfoy and others like him, who hated the Weasleys for their purported blood-treachery and poverty, nobody had ever really disliked Ron. He certainly wasn’t the brightest student (though he was brilliant at chess), and he wasn’t the best-looking either, but he had an effortless easiness about him. Harry was more conventionally handsome than Ron, with his bright green eyes and his just-shagged hair, and had the added allure of celebrity contributing to his mystique. While he had been a little more like Hermione in his intensity and the violence of his temper, he had retained a kind of lovable earnestness and accessibility quite at odds with his fame, which only served to make him more down-to-earth and appealing. She had been the brainy one, lacking Harry’s magnetism or Ron’s amiability, more ruthless than either of them, but focused and knowledgeable and logical. The boys had used to say that they wouldn’t last two days without her, but the truth was that they had been a good team. Harry and Ron were a bit helpless without her, she and Harry had been utterly miserable without Ron, and she and Ron would probably have been constantly at odds without Harry as a mediator. They were like the three sides of a Pythagorean triangle—if you took one away, you were left with a perfectly reasonable right angle, but an incomplete shape.

Tom Riddle, unfortunately, was a triangle all on his own. Whatever higher power had created him must have been planning on taking the following day off, because there could surely be no other explanation for his being the recipient of good qualities that could have been much more reasonably distributed across several people. Riddle had, of course, missed out on certain valuable attributes—empathy, humanity, a moral compass, just to name a few—but they seemed to be things he could fake quite convincingly. Either that, or he surrounded himself with people who simply didn’t care that he was a self-serving, power-hungry, pathologically deceitful psychopath who was not only well on his way to soullessness, but was more a humanoid hole in the social fabric than anything resembling an actual person.

Hermione jutted her lower lip forward and huffed out a frustrated breath, sending a few curls fluttering briefly upwards. They were addressing a short-answer question that called for them to choose between _eihwaz_ and _thurisaz_ for a defensive ward. While it was scarcely NEWT level material— _eihwaz_ was obviously the correct choice, in the context provided—she had just crossed an ‘f’ so fiercely that the nib of her quill tore through her parchment. It was rather lucky that Nott was sitting between her and Riddle, or there was a genuine risk that she would set the latter’s wretched, undeserving head on fire with nothing but the ferocity of her thoughts.

True, Tom Riddle was probably her academic equal (she refused to consider the fact that he might be her scholarly better this early in his life). True, he had an elegant sort of sensibility that she didn’t when it came to interacting with others. True, he had jaw-dropping good looks that she would never possess, whether as a girl or a boy. Still, if _he_ could fake a sense of human decency and a veneer of personable charm, then surely _she_ could feign a degree of subservience while still performing to a standard that would appeal to his acquisitive side.

There was a very real chance that Riddle, contrary to Donne’s opinion, _was_ an island. That self-possessed, self-reliant solitariness was both a strength and a shortcoming, and Hermione intended to take full advantage.


	4. Zizanie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to start trying brief chapter summaries, so people can (if they wish) skip material that doesn't float their boat. ;) 
> 
> This chapter - day three (Friday) of Hermione's new reality...first DADA, Transfiguration, and Herbology lessons. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments/kudos/hits (and for your patience - I know it can take me a while to reply). I'm so glad you're enjoying the ride so far, and really appreciate your feedback. ^_^ 
> 
> There are elements of magical theory in this chapter. Needless to say, I am not an expert on magical theory or Latin, so what's here is a synthesis of canon (i.e. the author Emeric Switch), what I've learnt from Google, and imagination. I hope you'll like it.
> 
> Without committing to anything, I also wondered how people would feel about a Tom POV to accompany this? A Nest of Vipers is very much Hermione's perspective, so it's hard to know what Tom is thinking. If it's something that people are interested in, I might try one chapter and see how I manage with Tom's voice (he feels a bit more slippery than Hermione).
> 
> Structurally, this is probably the second-last 'September' chapter. Chapter five will follow on from what happens here, and I then anticipate moving to a cluster of 'October' chapters so that we can follow Hermione's/Hermes' progress. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**IV. Zizanie**

_“Give way to your opponent, thus will you gain the crown of victory.”_ – Ovid

Friday morning dawned promisingly. Hermione and Tristan Nott were already up and moving about when a frantic knock at the dormitory door revealed an anxious third-year with an urgent request for Riddle’s presence. Riddle emerged from the bathroom, composed as ever, and promptly accompanied the younger boy to the site of whatever disaster had occurred. Hermione and Nott moved to the bathroom, brushing their teeth in a surprisingly comfortable silence. A bottle of Zizanie cologne was sitting on the vanity, and Hermione indicated it curiously. “Rawwrrls?” she asked. Riddle’s surname was badly distorted by her mouthful of toothpaste, but apparently intelligible, because Nott nodded in response. While it only made sense that the bottle belonged to Riddle (Lestrange, Avery, Rosier and Mulciber were still in bed), it was an oddly muggle choice for someone of his inclinations. She seemed to recall reading somewhere that it was the cologne Frank Sinatra had used, and she was quite certain that Frank hadn’t been a wizard. She chuckled to herself, the sound fortunately disguised by foam and saliva, as she imagined contaminating the cologne with Bubotuber pus.

Riddle still hadn’t returned when Hermione and Nott made their way to the Great Hall for breakfast, and she couldn’t quite conceal her good cheer at his absence. “Do you take Defense?” she asked Nott, already looking forward to that morning’s double period with the Gryffindors.

“We all do.” he replied, occupying himself with the _Daily Prophet_. “It’s the only subject that everyone in the dorm is enrolled in.”

 _Good_ , Hermione thought. If Riddle placed value on the subject (and she had already known that he did) then it would behove her to look competent. She didn’t want to challenge him, per se—not in his pet discipline—but she wanted him to know that she was well above average. While the Voldemort of the future had an army of half-witted brutes fighting for him due to the need for numbers, his inner circle was composed of the genuinely powerful. Bellatrix Lestrange, for all that she was utterly rabid, had been a formidable witch. Severus Snape had been a wizard of uncommon intelligence and ingenuity. Antonin Dolohov had been magically potent and horribly inventive. The Lestrange brothers were unmistakably powerful, and so was Lucius Malfoy, even if he was a self-serving coward. While Riddle wanted to maintain his unchallenged position at the very top of his mouldering pyramid of brainwashing and genocide, there was no question that he appreciated excellence. It was just as well, really, because if Riddle had been partial to mediocrity, she wasn’t sure she had the necessary attitude to maintain a convincing semblance. Mercifully, it was excellence he wanted, and excellence that he _recruited_ , so it was excellence he’d get.

If Riddle was even half as observant as Hermione strongly suspected he was, he had already noticed her competence in Charms. Gastrell had been obvious enough in his approval, and she had performed the spells as easily and quickly as Riddle himself. She had recognised Slughorn’s potions, so Riddle knew she wasn’t useless over a cauldron and, while she hadn’t had much opportunity to flex her academic muscles in Ancient Runes, the answers that she _had_ given had been right.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was Riddle’s territory. He would never have applied to teach it if he didn’t possess an exceptional understanding of the subject material, and it had never been Hermione’s strongest suit anyway, so she wasn’t even sure that she _could_ out-compete him there, even if she’d tried. Potions she was willing to let him have. Slughorn obviously worshipped the ground that Riddle walked on, and it would be difficult to supplant the future Head Boy in their head of house’s estimation. He adored Riddle so much he’d told him about horcruxes, for Merlin’s sake. That wasn’t to say that she wouldn’t excel in Potions—no matter the part she was playing, Hermione Granger didn’t sacrifice an Outstanding if she had a say in the matter, and she still wanted an invitation to the Slug Club—just that she would control some of her more swottish impulses. Divination, of course, she had no intention of contesting. If Riddle wanted to be the king of cartomancy, he was welcome to it.

Given her general display of aptitude, and her rather spirited takedown of Divination, she could only hope that Riddle was at least paying attention. The biggest problem was that, as far as his attention went, there was a fine and difficult balance to strike between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’, and she wasn’t quite sure where that balance lay. She certainly didn’t want him inquiring into her background more than was strictly necessary, but she _did_ want to become a part of his gang, and to work her way into a position as his trusted lieutenant. How intrigued would Riddle need to be, before allowing her to see a glimpse of his true colours? How big an asset did she need to appear, in order to be invited into the Knights of Walpurgis? How much of herself could she reveal without being deemed a threat or an inconvenience?

There were two particular subjects that were integral to Hermione’s plan, as far as Riddle and his clique were concerned, and beyond demonstrating her general competence and usefulness. The first was Transfiguration. According to Harry, Voldemort had always been irked by Dumbledore’s capacity to see through him. The Dumbledore of the 1940s already suspected (and probably disliked) Riddle and, if she could somehow earn her future Headmaster’s respect in class, she was quite certain that Riddle would be both envious and impressed. The second subject, of course, was DADA. Riddle might be the best, but Hermione would be damned if she didn’t at least try to be _second_ best. While Riddle wanted followers, he was too smart to align himself closely with the weak, the witless, or the incompetent. He loved to collect valuable things—trophies, acolytes, founders’ artefacts—all she had to do was show him that she was worth collecting.

***

Professor Galatea Merrythought could, Hermione thought, easily become one of her favourite professors. There was an edge of no-nonsense practicality about her that recalled Minerva McGonagall but, like Minerva, it was balanced with a just a hint of maternal concern. While she was of average height, Professor Merrythought had a controlled energy that seemed to exceed her size, and all her movements were crisp and obvious. Her dark, greying hair was contained in a tidy bun and, unlike most of the female professors in the 40s, she wore trousers and sensible shoes under her robes.

“Welcome back, everyone.” her voice was brisk and decisive, but also good-humoured. “I’m glad to see so many of you back for Defense at the NEWT level. As you’ve certainly already figured out, one of the biggest challenges this year is the move to non-verbal casting.” She paused and looked around as they all nodded to confirm that they had, indeed, figured that out. “We’ll certainly be looking at some non-verbal casting in our next few lessons, but for today, to take advantage of our double period, I think our time would be best spent blowing a few cobwebs off the skills we already have. I hate to think of you getting rusty over the summer holidays, so let’s revisit our last half-decade of magical education with some good, old-fashioned duelling.”

There had been a time when Hermione had lacked the instincts of a truly excellent duellist. Unlike Harry, who had always possessed a high degree of raw magical power and had an impulsive side that lent itself particularly well to duelling, she had always been a little too inclined to do things by the book. While a year on the run, a break-in at the Ministry, a Gringotts robbery, and two battles—one at Hogwarts, one at the Department of Mysteries—had cured Hermione of whatever reservations she might have had before her OWL, the true breakthrough had been the night that she had set her canaries on Ron. They hadn’t initially been part of an offensive spell, but she had nevertheless used them offensively, and it was at that moment that she had realised the essential role that creativity and flexibility played in a high-level duel. It was one thing to send a stunning spell at your opponent, but it was quite another to use _all_ the resources at your disposal. While there might be rules in place for a formal duel, as far as etiquette and not maiming your opponent were concerned, the types of magic you could use, and the _ways_ that you could use them, were almost limitless.

“You must be Mister Grangier.” Professor Merrythought’s voice cut across Hermione’s thoughts, and she nodded quickly. “Glad to have you here.”

“Glad to be here, Professor.”

“I imagine that’s true.” Merrythought replied, her brows creased with a little bit of sympathetic consternation. “Now, please don’t think me overly nosy—I know you earned an E in your Defense OWL, so you can clearly handle yourself—but would you call yourself a confident duellist?”

“Reasonably confident, ma’am.”

“As far as partners go, Tom’s the most obvious choice, but he’s the best duellist in the cohort, and I’m reluctant to feed you to him unless I know you’re up to the challenge. Riddle, Lestrange,” she attracted the attention of the two boys, “I’m splitting you up today. Riddle, you can duel Litchfield; he should provide you with at least some resistance. Lestrange, you can partner with Grangier here.” Lestrange smirked at Riddle before sauntering over, and Merrythought gave Hermione a bracing pat on the shoulder. “Lestrange is good, so be on your guard, but his OWL score was very similar to yours, so you should be reasonably well-matched.”

Sensibly, Professor Merrythought had them duel one pair at a time, rather than letting the classroom degenerate into absolute chaos. Riddle and his opponent, a sandy-haired Gryffindor named Lance Litchfield, went first. It was the first time Hermione had really had the chance to see Riddle use his wand, and it frankly bordered on depressing. While he certainly _looked_ sporting enough (side-stepping, throwing up the occasional shield), it was obvious that he was entirely unchallenged. It was so easy for him that his hair wasn’t even displaced. It wasn’t that Litchfield was bad, either; it was simply that Riddle was very, very good. He played with Litchfield the way that Crookshanks had played with Arnold the Pygmy Puff—prodding him about, ruffling his hair, perfectly capable of ripping him to shreds, but electing not to do so because he knew there’d be consequences if he did.

Riddle also (and Hermione was annoyed with herself for noticing) looked disgustingly good while he did it. He was exceptionally quick on his feet, his sharp gaze was focused, and his elegant physique and striking profile were admirably displayed by his duelling stance. Michelangelo would have wept over that bum and those cheekbones, and two of the girls had actually _tittered_ when Riddle removed his robes and blazer in preparation, causing Hermione to roll her eyes so hard that it was almost painful. When Riddle finally put Litchfield out of his misery after allowing the boy to waste his time for two or three minutes, it was to well-deserved praise from Professor Merrythought, five points for Slytherin, and polite applause from the remainder of the students.

Two Gryffindor girls were next, Augusta Greenbank and Olivia Thornton. They were capable, and very well-matched, but not overly exciting. They both maintained a solid shield charm, but outside of that they mostly exchanged a sequence of uninteresting, fairly innocuous spells. When they finished, with Thornton disarming Greenbank, Hermione and Lestrange were invited to the clear space at the front of the room.

A small, vicious part of Hermione was thoroughly delighted at having been paired with Lestrange. Despite the fact that she had known him for less than forty eight hours, she couldn’t help but despise him. Blood prejudice practically oozed from his precious Pureblood pores and, while he wouldn’t dare to say so out loud, presumably in case it got back to Riddle, he looked down at her ‘half-blood’ self like she might have looked down at a dead flobberworm stuck to her shoe. He reminded her of Malfoy, and if that wasn’t enough of a reason to knock him on his backside, she didn’t know what was.

They adopted their poses, and she quickly evaluated Lestrange’s stance. His arrogance was clearly evident in the sloppiness of his position. Instead of standing side-on to present her with the smallest possible target his body was lazily angled at around forty-five degrees, and his weight, which should have been equally distributed between his feet, was concentrated on his back leg due to his casual, slouching attitude. Hermione shifted her weight fractionally to one side, seeing if he would follow the movement, but Lestrange simply looked bored and scratched the nape of his neck. Suppressing a grin, Hermione gave a simple bow. He reciprocated with something so fleeting that it bordered on rude, and Professor Merrythought counted them in.

“One.” Hermione rolled her weight forward slightly, onto the balls of her feet, ready for action.

“Two.” She adjusted her grip on her wand, ensuring that her hold was suitable for high-speed casting. While Lestrange didn’t _look_ like a major threat, she didn’t want him to surprise her.

“Three!” Merrythought said, and Hermione whipped her wand through the air so quickly that even _she_ barely saw it.

Hermione’s non-verbal _silencio_ hit Lestrange before he’d had a chance to process what happened. She had watched him in Charms yesterday, and the only unspoken spell he’d managed had been a weak _leviosa_ , so she wasn’t overly worried about whatever he could cast wordlessly. Fury did him a world of favours, though, as he waved his wand in a silent (but successful) _finite_. She took advantage of his momentary distraction to disillusion herself. While she could easily have used the moment to knock him flat, there’d be hardly any fun in that. They’d barely started, after all.

Lestrange, seemingly inclined to take the duel more seriously now that there was a risk he might be beaten, narrowed his eyes as he searched for her. Demonstrating critical thinking skills that she wouldn’t have credited him with, he cast a powerful _aguamenti_. Hermione didn’t bother with a shield—it was only water—but her position was exposed anyway when the water broke over her body. Lestrange set about casting a _revelio_ , and Hermione let him, using the same moment to cast _glacius_ on the water pooling on the floor. Having revealed her saturated form, Lestrange was so busy radiating satisfaction that he failed to notice the change and, when he hastily sidestepped to avoid her tickling jinx, he promptly lost his footing on the slippery surface. There was an amusing moment of suspension as he scrambled there, his limbs wheeling frantically before he lost his balance and crashed to the floor with a painful-sounding crack.

Muttering a particularly vile oath, he shot a stinging hex at her from his position on the floor. Hermione hadn’t quite been expecting him to retaliate so quickly and, while she largely avoided the spell, she hissed as it grazed her right arm. He followed up with a stunner, which her newly-conjured shield easily deflected, and scrambled to his feet as she vanished the ice.

Lestrange, who appeared to be losing his temper quite quickly, sent a nasty slicing hex in her direction. She waved it away and flung a jelly-legs jinx back at him. While he focused on ducking that (she had deliberately aimed high) she used a sticking charm on his unsuspecting left shoe. She followed up with a quick _avis_ —one of her favourite spells—and noted that her feelings towards Lestrange must have directly affected the conjuration. Instead of her usual canaries, a small flock of bright-eyed blackbirds circled her head. Lestrange foresaw the danger an instant before she cast _oppugno_ , and tried to retreat. Naturally, he didn’t make it far with his shoe welded to the floor, and promptly fell over backwards, letting out a high-pitched shriek of pain as his ankle bent at an unusual angle. The blackbirds, beady eyes gleaming, shot towards him like feathered darts, pecking and scratching with abandon. Utterly overwhelmed, Lestrange couldn’t seem to decide between fending the birds away from his face or using a severing charm on his shoelaces. “Expelliarmus!” Hermione shouted, with energy that would have made Harry proud. Lestrange was far too occupied to put up any further resistance, and she snatched his dark, stylish wand out of the air with ease as it was wrenched from his grip.

Hermione allowed the birds to remain for another second or two before she vanished them, and they puffed out of existence in a flurry of black feathers, several of which remained in Lestrange’s hair. One adorably fluffy, downy little feather glued itself to a scratch on his chin, giving the hilarious impression of a tiny, fuzzy goatee. She considered pointing it out, but doubted that Lestrange would find it as funny as she did.

It took a few seconds for the sound of applause to penetrate the adrenaline that had overrun Hermione’s mind. She glanced at the remainder of the class, shocked to see them clapping and Professor Merrythought grinning.

“Very impressive, Grangier. Five points to Slytherin.” Hermione walked across to Lestrange and offered him her hand. He gave her a dark look and scrambled to his feet, ignoring the proffered appendage and, she suspected, wishing her a painful death. “Lestrange,” Merrythought continued, “you did well to recover from that initial silencing charm, and the _aguamenti_ was a good thought, but if you compromise your duelling environment, you have to remain aware of the danger. If you don’t, your opponent can use it against you, as Grangier did. Now, let’s have a look at you both.” She cast a number of quick healing charms on the various minor scratches that Lestrange had sustained, and a diagnostic to confirm that his ankle hadn’t suffered any damage. Hermione, in the meantime, dried herself off with a wave of her wand. Rolling her sleeves up—the excitement of the duel had left her a little warm, and the drying charm hadn’t helped—she inspected the red, swollen patch where his stinging hex had made contact. The injury was nothing, and Merrythought healed it with a single wave of her wand before directing the two of them to re-join their classmates.

It wasn’t until they were all watching the next pair, two Slytherin girls, that an exultant Avery (who mustn’t have been fond of Lestrange) interrupted his loudly-whispered congratulations with a shocked hiss. “Circe’s snatch, Grangier,” while she hadn’t known him long, Hermione had already noticed that Avery had a truly impressive arsenal of inventive profanities at his disposal, “what happened to your arm?”

Mystified, she inspected her arm. The effects of the stinging hex were completely gone, and Avery’s response seemed a little excessive, given that it had only been a glancing blow in the first place. She looked up at him, confused, half-extending the arm in an unspoken query. With his brow creased, and his lively hazel eyes narrowed in concern, Avery pushed the limb back to her side. “The _other_ arm.” he said lowly, and she felt the sudden weight of several pairs of eyes as Riddle, Nott, and Rosier all subtly looked her way. Mulciber was apparently too gormless to know what was happening, and Lestrange was studiously ignoring her existence.

She reluctantly lifted her bare left forearm for Avery’s inspection. It _was_ a hideous scar, but she could hardly have come along to play at being a half-blood wizard with ‘MUDBLOOD’ carved into her flesh, so she’d had to take certain measures to cover it up. Looking down at the mangled limb she gritted her teeth in remembered pain, bile rising in the back of her throat as she recalled the skin bubbling and blistering under her barely-sustained _ambustius_ (a darker, more destructive variant of the _incendio_ spell). She had been terrified she’d bite through her own tongue, and the agony of the burn had only been intensified by the dark magic inherent in the cursed wound underneath. She had sworn that she would, one day, heal the self-inflicted scar. Unlike the underlying word, it wasn’t cursed, and would resolve with proper treatment, but for now she’d have to live with it. It spanned almost the entire length of her pale forearm, and the poorly-healed skin was discoloured, mottled, and ropey. It was no wonder Avery looked so horrified. “How, Hermes?” he asked, and her expression must have been suitably haunted, because the question was uttered softly.

“At home.” she said truthfully. “They were _his_ men.” Avery would certainly assume that she meant Grindelwald, but she was of course referring to Voldemort. “We were rescued before anything worse could happen.”

“Couldn’t they have healed it a little better?”

“It was a curse. They never heal like they should, but it doesn’t really bother me. There’s hardly ever any pain.”

She and Avery regarded one another for a long, silent moment. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” he said quietly, and she was entirely convinced that he meant it. It was strange to look into the eyes of a future Death Eater and see that he was actually upset by what she had suffered at the hands of one of his successors. She dropped her arm back to her side, concealing the scar against her body, and jerked her head in a little nod of acknowledgement.

“Thanks, Alfred.”

***

“It is, of course, a pleasure to see so many of you here.” Professor Dumbledore twinkled at them during their single period of Transfiguration. Hermione fancied that his blue eyes cooled when they passed over Riddle, but accepted that she might have imagined it. “It is a regrettable fact,” Dumbledore winked, “that NEWT level Transfiguration is notoriously tricky, and ranks amid the most difficult magic you will encounter in your time at Hogwarts. Nonetheless, I am quite certain that you are all more than capable, and great challenges provide great excitement. Can anyone, perhaps, tell me some of the types of Transfiguration we’ll be attempting this year?” Hermione’s hand was the first in the air, and Dumbledore looked down his nose at her in seemingly pleased bemusement. “Yes, Mister Grangier?”

“Human Transfiguration, sir.”

“Very good, and quite correct. Another? Mister Litchfield?”

“Conjuring spells, Professor?”

“Indeed, indeed—a thrilling subset of the discipline, if rather more challenging than the vanishing spells to which we’ve grown accustomed. In addition to these, we’ll be pursuing more complex transubstantial and switching transfigurations, starting with that timeless classic: flobberworm to fritter.”

Dumbledore continued to speak as he moved cheerfully about the room, depositing flobberworms in front of the students. Hermione’s flobberworm began an immediate bid for the edge of her desk, and she shepherded it gently back to the centre with her quill. “The incantation,” Dumbledore was saying, “is _vermis_ _recoquis_. Would someone care to tell me what factors we ought to be considering, in determining the difficulty of this particular transfiguration? Yes, Tom?” Hermione noted, with interest, that Dumbledore used Riddle’s given name. She supposed it must have been a conscious choice, intended to remind Riddle that Dumbledore had been the one to retrieve him from the orphanage, and that he still knew who and what lurked beneath the polished Prefect Riddle had become.

Riddle’s voice, when he replied, was perfect, pleasant, and evenly modulated, giving no indication that he might have been irritated by the informal address from his most hated professor. “As a live animal transfiguration, sir, the difficulty can be discerned using the transfiguration equation. In this particular case, the wand power and concentration required are relatively high, in keeping with the complexity of the incantation and the transition from animate to inanimate. The viciousness and the bodyweight of the flobberworm are so minimal that the bottom line of the equation could be a decimal, in which case the value of the wand power and concentration would _increase_ , rather than decreasing as we would typically expect when dividing. Of course, there’s no accounting for unknown variable Z, but even so, the difficulty is likely high.”

“Very good, Tom.” Dumbledore commented mildly, sounding as though he was intending to continue. He stopped, that pleased-but-bemused expression on his face again, when he saw Hermione’s hand shoot into the air. “You have something to add, Mister Grangier?”

“With all respect, sir, I’m not sure that Riddle is entirely correct.” Hermione felt, rather than saw, the collected indrawn breath of her classmates. “While that _is_ the correct equation for this particular transfiguration, and Riddle’s reasoning is theoretically sound, Leggert’s Lethality Index has specified that the flobberworm has a viciousness ranking of zero. Anything multiplied by zero is zero, so regardless of bodyweight; the divisor remains a zero. No matter the wand power and concentration involved—and both _are_ high, for the reasons Riddle’s cited—there is no defined solution when you divide by zero. The result is infinite, which renders variable Z irrelevant. It’s quite rare, as far as live-animal transfigurations go, in that it’s undefined: it’s exactly as easy or as difficult as the caster makes it. The phenomenon was theorised by Emeric Switch in _Mystifying Metamorphoses_ , and he calls it Subjective Disparity.”

Dumbledore’s eyebrows had been slowly climbing his forehead as she spoke, and the conclusion of her speech was followed by absolute silence from the rest of the classroom. She glanced around and quickly averted her eyes from Riddle’s icy glare and slightly flushed cheekbones. A beaming smile spread across the Professor’s face as he clasped his hands together with almost childlike delight. “Most impressive, Mister Grangier, take ten points for Slytherin. I take it you’ve read _Mystifying Metamorphoses_?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where do you stand, if you don’t mind my asking, on the issue of Conjuration Consternation?”

“I think Switch’s idea has merits, sir, but I also think he’s inclined to over-diagnose. Failure to perform a spell, particularly a difficult spell, doesn’t necessarily entail any particular physiological problem.” Dumbledore smiled down at her, nodding gently.

“Returning to the question of Subjective Disparity, perhaps you would care to apply your knowledge of Switch’s theory, and show us how easily the spell might be accomplished.” Dumbledore indicated her flobberworm, which had taken advantage of her distraction and had nearly succeeded in reaching the edge of her desk. Hermione grabbed it, repressing a shudder at the soft, slimy quality of its flesh, and returned it to its proper place.

“Did you have a certain type of fritter in mind, sir?” she asked a trifle cheekily.

“A flobberworm fritter would be customary,” Dumbledore chuckled, “but don’t allow me to impede your creativity.” Hermione, with a sudden flash of inspiration, remembered the Headmaster’s enduring love of lemon drops in her own time.

“ _Vermis recoquis_.” she cast confidently, telling herself that the spell was the easiest thing in the world and keeping in mind the delicious lemon fritters (spherical, dusted with sugar) that she had once had on holiday in Italy. The flobberworm shrank into a perfect ball, its murky colour lightening to golden brown, and its smooth skin transforming into crisp batter crusted with sugar. She looked up at Dumebledore, who was twinkling more than ever, and extended the fritter in his direction on a piece of parchment. The professor deftly (and rather bravely, she thought, given that he couldn’t really know the spell had been entirely successful, and that the golden exterior might conceal the mucus-filled digestive tract of a flobberworm) raised the fritter and popped it into his mouth.

“Delightful.” he proclaimed, brushing a bit of fallen sugar out of the long auburn strands of his beard. “Remarkable spellwork, Mister Grangier, and I _do_ have an enduring weakness for lemon. Twenty five points to Slytherin,” from the corner of her eye, Hermione saw Nott’s mouth drop open, “and you may either pursue private study or assist your classmates for the remainder of the lesson. Mind over magic, everyone! You’ve seen how easily it can be done, so contain those flobberworms,” there was a moment of frantic movement as one or two students found the little creatures had given them the slip, “and begin.”

***

Herbology afforded few opportunities to distance herself from Riddle. The tall, bench-like desks in greenhouse six each accommodated four students, and only four of the Slytherin boys (including herself), took the subject. She was unsurprised by Riddle, of course—with the exception of Arithmancy, it seemed he was in bloody _everything_ —but was surprised that it was Lestrange and Mulciber who joined them. She supposed that Mulciber must have been enrolled in at least _some_ subjects, if he ever hoped to get a job. Why Lestrange was there was anyone’s guess, she wouldn’t have picked him as enjoying the feeling of dirt and dragon dung under his fingernails.

Professor Beery, a heavyset wizard with dark blond hair and robust stubble, had a clear, operatic voice and a flair for elaborate hand gestures, both quite at odds with his grubby, outdoorsy appearance. He informed them that they’d be pruning and fertilising the potted knotgrass, and there was an ensuing scuffle for the most kempt-looking plants that seemed in the least need of maintenance. Hermione, unwilling to fight for prime position, ended up with a particularly luxuriant specimen that obscured the lower half of her face.

Pruning the knotgrass wasn’t particularly tricky, in and of itself. Aside from nipping yourself with the pruning shears, the only real risk was allowing the fresh sap to get on your hands. While it didn’t burn or disfigure, it _did_ cause your fingers to twist together and, if not treated with adequate haste, could result in broken bones when the digits tied themselves into labyrinthine knots. By unhappy coincidence, Hermione had found herself next to Lestrange, with Mulciber and Riddle standing opposite. Fortunately, Lestrange’s pride seemed to have recovered from their earlier duel. Unfortunately, that manifested itself in a number of crude jokes.

“Get in there, Caius.” Lestrange smirked at Mulciber, who was carefully nipping stray sections off his plant. Despite the fact that it was called a grass, Knotgrass was quite leafy, with small shoots coming off a larger central stem. “Keeping your bush trimmed will make the shaft look bigger.” Mulciber’s placid face coloured slightly, and a clearly delighted Lestrange snickered. Riddle, apparently used to such manifest stupidity, rolled his eyes in a gesture so startlingly _normal_ that Hermione blinked several times as she processed it.

“Not everyone needs to resort to optical illusions, Rainier.” Riddle commented, sounding rather bored. “While I’m all for good grooming, many possess natural endowments that prevent the necessity of such deceptive measures.” Hermione nearly choked on her own spit. Innuendo? From Voldemort? Lestrange sputtered for a moment, but quickly burst into obnoxious laughter, showing that he was on board with the joke. A moment later, with a sound that might have indicated interest, he pulled something from his knotgrass.

“Look, a bowtruckle.” he held the tiny creature, likely a juvenile, up for their inspection, and they all looked with varying degrees of attention. They had returned to pruning when Hermione heard a faint, high-pitched sound. Her eyes flickered back to Lestrange, and she saw him holding both ends of the bowtruckle, gradually bending it like he would any common old twig as the minute, stick-like creature screamed. Her vision turned red, and she was just about to give him a piece of her mind when she heard a soft, unfamiliar voice.

“Stop it, Rainier.” Mulciber’s voice was slow and mellow, and Hermione was shocked to realise that it was the first time she could recall actually hearing him speak.

“Stop what?” Lestrange continued to bend the bowtruckle, arranging his features into an expression of faux ignorance clearly intended to incense.

“Put him down,” Mulciber said, with slightly more feeling, “you’re hurting him.”

“So? It’s just a stupid bowtruckle.”

“It’s not stupid.” Mulciber muttered, eyebrows drawing together in consternation.

“Of course it is.” Lestrange grinned back. “Why else do you suppose you can empathise with it so easily?” Hermione ground her molars together so hard that her dentist parents would likely have shrieked with horror. She had never been able to stand injustice, particularly when it was directed at harmless creatures by wizards who imagined themselves so superior.

“I agree with Mulciber.” she said loudly, and both boys looked at her in surprise. “Put the bowtruckle down.”

“What?” it appeared Lestrange was unused to resistance.

“Put the bowtruckle down,” Hermione said again, firmly, “and apologise to Mulciber. It’s not his fault that Riddle made a joke about the size of your dick.” Lestrange’s mouth actually fell open in shock, and Hermione wished that one of the flies hovering about the dragon dung fertiliser would take advantage of the opening.

“Make me.” he said, low and challenging, turning to face her more directly (or rather, to look down at her more directly). Hermione tilted her chin up to meet his stare.

“I didn’t think you’d be ready for another thrashing so soon, Lestrange, but-”

“Now, now, gentlemen,” Riddle’s smooth voice cut neatly through what was about to become a threat, “let’s not get carried away. Rainier, I think that Grangier is right, you _do_ owe Caius an apology.”

Giving Riddle a briefly mutinous look, Lestrange turned to Mulciber. “Sorry, Caius.” he muttered, all bad grace and insincerity.

“Grangier,” Riddle turned his soot-dark regard on her, “I appreciate that you’re still settling in, but at Hogwarts we don’t resolve our differences by duelling.”

“Veracious as ever, Mister Riddle!” Professor Beery trilled from only a few feet behind Hermione and Lestrange, making them both flinch. “A greenhouse is no place for a squabble, boys, but seeing as Mister Riddle has already taken you to task, I’ll not deduct points. Now, attend to your plants; this knotgrass won’t prune itself.”

Suitably chastened—she was _never_ disciplined by teachers—Hermione turned her attention back to her pot. From the corner of her eye, she noted that Lestrange still had the bowtruckle trapped in his left hand, his right moving towards his pair of secateurs. The bowtruckle squeaked, its matchstick limbs waving about as it attempted to free itself, and Hermione _knew_ what Lestrange was planning even before the blades of his shears flashed in the sun. Moving her hand discreetly to her left pocket, where she had stuffed her wand at the start of the lesson, she cast a silent pin hex full of powerful intent. The hex hit Lestrange’s left hand, driving a needle-like point of energy deep into the tip of his middle finger. With a shout of shock and pain, Lestrange dropped the bowtruckle, blood welling from the tiny, but undoubtedly painful, wound.

“The little fucker!” he snarled, clearly thinking the bowtruckle had bitten him.

“ _Language_ , Lestrange!” Beery’s voice trumpeted from several tables away. “Five points from Slytherin. Don’t push my forbearance any further for today.”

Hermione pressed her lips together to stop herself from giving a satisfied smile, noting that the bowtruckle had scuttled off into the depths of the greenhouse, safe from further violence. When she looked up over the top leaves of her knotgrass, Mulciber’s light blue eyes met hers. Silently and unobtrusively, so as not to attract attention, he gave her a single, appreciative nod, his gaze dropping to her concealed wand. She returned the gesture, and the quiet, shared moment felt something like friendship. The soft little flutter of warmth in her chest rapidly coalesced into something cold and foreboding when she saw that Mulciber was not the _only_ one looking at her: Riddle’s scalpel-sharp stare hadn’t missed a thing.


	5. Levity and Brevity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friday night's dinner brings unexpected pleasure. Saturday morning's Quidditch tryouts prompt a great deal of observation, some unsettling recollections, and a startling realisation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, you all have the patience of saints. I'm aware that I am terribly behind schedule in uploading this chapter, and I do apologise for the (apparently interminable) delay. This one just seemed to fight back as I was writing (prompting multiple versions and more discarded words than I care to count), and while I'm not entirely happy with it, I think it does the necessary work and I'm hoping the next one comes more easily! There will be another September chapter after all, before we move to the October sequence. :) 
> 
> Sincerest thanks for the reads, kudos, and reviews. I've loved reading and replying to your comments (even though it's taken me forever to respond to some of them), and I've been amazed by the response to the story so far. 
> 
> I'll take this opportunity to advise that the next chapter may be late as well, as I have a big deadline coming up, but hopefully normal service will resume in September.

**Levity and Brevity**

_“Not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame.”_ – Patrick Suskind

Dinner that night was a raucous affair. Tryouts for the Slytherin Quidditch team were scheduled for the following morning, and were seemingly all anyone could talk about. There were an (apparently unprecedented) _three_ spots available on the team, as several players had graduated at the end of the previous school year. From what Hermione could gather, the team was looking for a Chaser, a Beater, and a Seeker, and the latter position was drawing the most speculation. Avery was attracting more than his fair share of attention as other students stopped to discuss strategy, ask for tips, or just schmooze in the hope of some nebulous advantage. Mulciber, not handsome enough to be confident, not confident enough to be loud, and not loud enough to attract focus, was largely ignored, despite the fact that he was also on the team. Lestrange, for all his obvious efforts to _play it cool_ , was clearly hoping to achieve the remaining Chaser position. While Hermione had no idea of whether or not he was a good flier, she suspected that his desire for a place on the team had less to do with Quidditch, and more to do with the frankly embarrassing amount of female attention that Alfred was, at that moment, receiving.

Hermione had _Spellman’s Syllabary_ open on the table—there had been some significant advances between the 1940s and 1990s editions, and she was interested to see how the earlier version accounted for the problems that were only resolved later—and was reading it out of the corner of her eye when she realised that Avery was talking to her. He had seemingly shaken off his most recent groupie, and his eyebrows were raised expectantly, as if he was waiting on the response to a question. The talk of Quidditch had seen Hermione zone out entirely, and she had been absent-mindedly separating her carrots from her beans while she planned how she could use the following morning (when everyone was distracted by tryouts) for some private research in the library. “Sorry, Avery,” she eventually confessed, unable to conceal the fact that she had very obviously not been listening, “what was that?”

“I asked if you were trying out tomorrow? For Quidditch?” Hermione blanched in response to his polite query.

“No way!” she said, unable to contain an obvious shudder. Avery’s expression was so surprised that she may as well have grown an extra head. “That is,” she continued soothingly, “I’m not much of a flyer—never really had an affinity for broomsticks. The first and only time I had a lesson, I couldn’t even get the broom off the ground.”

For all that he had appeared entirely distracted by his efforts to catch the eye of a pretty brunette, Lestrange was still attending closely enough to their conversation to sneer at her admission, and she ignored his loud, derisive scoff.

“Why not?” Avery asked, actually pouting, though he was obviously not as offended as he was purporting to be. Hermione rolled her eyes: boys and their bloody broomsticks.

“How should I know, Alfred? I said ‘up’ and the thing just sat there like a Horklump. Trust me, it’s not that I actually _enjoyed_ failing.”

“Broomsticks are a bit like wands,” Lestrange interjected, giving her a snide, meaningful look, “they’ll only fly for a worthy wizard.”

“Merlin knows how yours ever gets off the ground, then.” Hermione simpered back, in a poor imitation of his patronising tone. Lestrange recoiled with a snotty expression while Avery let out a suppressed snort of amusement which he tried to disguise as a cough.

“While he’s being deliberately rude about it,” Alfred said with a grin, “Rainier _is_ more or less right. Broomsticks won’t fly, or won’t fly well, if they sense that you’re reluctant or scared. You have to actually want to work with them; it’s what separates average flyers from really good ones.”

“Well, I guess my broomstick was spot on, then. I’ve never liked heights, and I’m not at all interested in giving a magical twig sole responsibility for my wellbeing.”

“But isn’t that exactly what you do every time you duel?” Alfred asked. Hermione raised her eyebrows, regarding him with what Harry and Ron called her ‘lecturing look’.

“That’s different, and you know it. The magic that comes from a wand is _my_ magic: it would be possible for me to cast wandlessly, because the wand is just a conduit. A broomstick’s not a conduit, because we can’t fly unaided, even with magic. The broom does the flying, and _you_ are just a passenger. While they’re designed to give you the impression of control as far as speed and steering are concerned, you’re not really in control. Ergo, there’s plenty of scope for something catastrophic to happen. You, Alfred, can suit yourself, but I’m not going to sit there passively on some stick and wait for someone else’s enchantments to fail and drop me to my death.”

“You sound like Tom.” Avery chuckled, and Hermione was so appalled by the very suggestion that she was rendered speechless. “He hates broomsticks too.”

“I don’t hate them, Alfred.” Riddle’s velvety voice (honestly, he never seemed to miss _anything_ ) rose up from Lestrange’s far side. “I just don’t trust them. When I fly, and I _will_ fly, I’ll do so using my own power, not that of a—as Grangier so eloquently puts it—magical twig.”

“And how do you propose to do that, Riddle, given that there is no spell for unsupported flight?” Hermione asked tartly, still bitter at Avery’s suggestion that she had Riddle had anything in common. She knew, of course, that unsupported flight was a feat that the Voldemort of her time _had_ managed, and she was desperately curious as to how he had achieved it. Leaning around Lestrange, Riddle gave her a cool little smile.

“Once upon a time, there was no spell for levitation either. Now there is. What we can achieve with magic today doesn’t determine what we might achieve with magic tomorrow. Unfortunately, a great many witches and wizards allow their textbooks,” he paused, giving her open copy of the _Syllabary_ a pointed look, “to limit their potential, stifle their creativity, constrain their ambition, and set the parameters of what they can accomplish.” Hermione’s mouth dropped open in offense at his implication, and the corner of Riddle’s mouth twitched upwards in what she assumed to be genuine amusement. She occupied herself with a forkful of carrots, allowing him his petty victory, but stubbornly left the book open on the table just to show him that she didn’t care for his opinion.

“You will come, though?” Avery, unsurprisingly, didn’t seem to have moved far beyond thoughts of Quidditch. “To tryouts?”

“Um, I was really thinking I could-” Avery’s face fell before she’d even finished “-use some time in the library.”

“You _have_ to come, Hermes! Tom comes, and he doesn’t give a shit about Quidditch. Support! Camaraderie! House solidarity!”

“Don’t be fooled, Grangier.” Nott said dryly. “It’s got nothing to do with ‘camaraderie’. It’s just that Alfred happens to be an exceptional flier, and wants you present so that you can tell him so yourself.”

“Tristan!” Avery cried, placing a hand theatrically over his heart. If Hermione had met Alfred in the muggle world, she’d certainly have picked him for a budding actor—she was quickly learning that his flair for the dramatic bordered on preternatural. “How could you? Do you truly imagine my motives are so _base_ , so _self-serving_ -” Nott flicked a pea at him, cutting him off, and the tiny green legume bounced jauntily off Avery’s forehead before falling with extraordinary, unerring accuracy into his goblet of pumpkin juice.

The three of them looked at each other in momentary silence. Avery and Nott’s expressions were so stunned that they were positively comical, and Hermione, who had been in a state of escalating tension ever since her arrival in the 1940s (tension which had grown increasingly untenable in the three days since she’d met Riddle), was unable to restrain herself. She began to giggle.

While she did try to pitch her voice lower than usual, aware that her laughter tended to shrill, Hermione simply couldn’t prevent the noise from escaping: Avery just looked _so_ incredulous, and Nott _so_ amazed. It was exactly the kind of stupid, harmless behaviour she might have expected from Dean and Seamus, but so much at odds with how she had always imagined her Slytherin classmates (proper, snooty, refined) that she was unexpectedly but hugely entertained.

Avery, noticing her amusement, began to laugh himself. The sound was bright and cheerful, very much in keeping with what she knew of his disposition, and easily audible even over the general din of the Great Hall. Even Nott, who tended to serious and quiet, was chuckling, his expression a mix of perplexity and good humour which softened the sharpness of his angular features. Lestrange’s plaintive, repeated enquiries—“What? What? What’s so funny? Alfred?”—only exacerbated their gradually escalating laughter, and it wasn’t long before she and Avery were breathless with daft, pointless hilarity.

It was, Hermione thought, the first time she had _truly_ laughed in weeks, maybe even months, and once she started, she couldn’t stop. She laughed until she was almost choking, oxygen-deprived and with tears in her eyes. She laughed at the unbelievable, dangerous insanity of her whole situation. She laughed at the fact that, despite being a future Death Eater, Alfred Avery was laughing with her, sensitive to her amusement in a way that made her wonder whether he was also a sympathy-crier. She laughed at the stupid bloody pea in his pumpkin juice. She laughed at the faintly disturbed expression on Tom Riddle’s face as he directed his attention elsewhere, clearly determined to ignore their stupidity and lack of dignity. The tears of laughter welling in her eyes were touched with pain, coloured by memories of the occasions that she had laughed like this with _her_ boys, sitting in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room. She laughed at the ludicrous impossibility of crying over memories of people who didn’t even exist yet. She and Avery laughed in such a way that Lestrange actually inched away from them in an effort to distance himself, which only served to make them laugh even harder.

Nott was barely more composed, but kept trying to explain himself to Lestrange, an effort which was undermined by his inability to describe the pea’s trajectory without declining into incomprehensible snickers. Eventually, even Lestrange turned away in disgust, returning his focus to Riddle and leaving the three of them to gradually regain some sense of decorum. When they had finally settled down (it took considerable time, especially when Alfred made a performance out of drinking the pumpkin juice, pea and all) Avery fixed serious hazel eyes upon her.

“You _have_ to come to tryouts now.” he said.

“And why is that, Avery?” Hermione asked, waiting for some trite response about friendship, or team spirit, or whatever other shite the blond was cooking up. He looked at her, seemingly confused.

“ _Because_ ,” he said, as if she were missing something obvious, “I drank a pea for you.”

Lestrange’s auburn head whipped back towards them so quickly that Hermione was amazed he didn’t crick his neck.

“Did you say you _drank pee_?” he hissed at Avery, sounding positively (and understandably) scandalised. Nott snorted, setting them off again, and they were quite incapable of sensible conversation for the remainder of the meal.

***

Sure enough, Saturday morning found Hermione freezing her arse off on the bleachers beside the Quidditch pitch. She very much regretted allowing Avery to talk her into it, but he so clearly wanted her there, and was making such obvious overtures of friendship, that continued resistance had felt rather churlish. In truth, while Quidditch didn’t particularly interest her, it wasn’t the tryouts themselves that were the source of her regret. Nor was it the bitter Scottish air biting determinedly at the tip of her nose. No; it was the _company_ that made her wish she’d stayed in the dormitory.

Avery and Mulciber, of course, were geared up and flying around, ready to perform drills with the gang of Slytherin hopefuls currently listening to the captain (a seventh-year boy Hermione hadn’t met). Lestrange, of course, was one of the hopefuls, though saying that he was ‘listening’ to the captain would have been an obvious falsehood: he was preening far too assiduously to be attending properly to whatever he was being told.

Rosier had elected to stay in their dormitory. Apparently the Divination professor—a Professor Delphi, who Hermione hadn’t yet encountered—had told him it would be ‘inauspicious’ for him to attend the tryouts. Whether or not there had been an actual _reason_ for that purported inauspiciousness remained a mystery to Hermione, but she hadn’t wanted to push too hard, especially after her first Divination-related exchange with Riddle. As soon as Rosier had regretfully advised that he wouldn’t be going, Nott had immediately volunteered to stay behind to keep him company. It wasn’t like Rosier would have been alone anyway (it was a Saturday, and the common room was teeming with students of all year levels), and Hermione strongly suspected that it was just an excuse for Nott to avoid spending two cold, misty, pointless hours by the pitch. Unfortunately, of the sixth-year-male-Slytherin posse, that only left her and Riddle.

She slanted a careful glance at him where he was sitting on the end of the bleacher. She was, after a fashion, sitting next to him, but she’d left a respectful (some might say ‘unfriendly’) distance between them. While his outward appearance was one of polite attention—eyes directed at the players, posture neatly vertical, expression open but alert—she suspected that it concealed a state of supreme irritation. True, he was looking _in the direction_ of the flyers, but he wasn’t actually _watching_ them. It was comforting, somehow, to know that he didn’t want to be there any more than she did. Nonetheless, he presented a very proper picture. Despite the near-freezing temperature, he wasn’t overdressed. In fact, he was wearing much the same thing as every other day, and his single concession to his own comfort was a Slytherin scarf, which could well have been more in the interests of house loyalty than actual warmth. Where Hermione’s scarf was a huge, bobbly monstrosity that encircled her neck twice and concealed her chin, Riddle’s was looped once (and not too tightly) around his neck. Where her woollen hat squashed her curls down, making them stick out from under it in all sorts of chaos, Riddle’s dark, well-styled hair was lightly ruffled by the frigid breeze. Where her icy hands were stuffed into a pair of dark mittens, his were neatly interlaced on his lap, exposed to the elements. Only his gently tapping thumbs belied his impatience with the spectacle before them and, once Hermione started watching his hands, she found herself unable to stop.

In keeping with the rest of his appearance, Riddle’s hands were beautiful and well-maintained. They were long and elegant, the fingers slender enough to suggest class, but sufficiently square-tipped to indicate masculinity, and his ring fingers were visibly lengthier than his index fingers. His knuckle-to-finger ratio was relatively even, preventing the knuckles from looking large or knobbly in relation to his phalanges. The nails were short and neat—cut, not bitten—with only a thin crescent of white at the free edge. His cuticles were trimmed so unerringly that there wasn’t a ragged fragment of skin anywhere in sight, and even his lunulae were freakishly uniform. If they’d belonged to anyone else, she might have called them pianist’s hands. As it was, she knew that they were a homicidal lunatic’s hands, and thoughts of what they’d done—killed (and likely tortured) his father, murdered his grandparents—rather diminished their attractiveness. In fact, the longer she looked at them, the more arachnidan they appeared.

By far the most prominent feature of the appendages, of course, was the black and gold ring encircling the middle finger of his left hand. Hermione was interested to note that he chose to wear it on the middle finger, rather than the more conventional ring finger. On another man, she might have assumed that he was leaving space for a wedding band. On Riddle, it was somehow more sinister. While it _might_ have been a simple matter of size (ring fingers were generally more slender than middle fingers), magic made adjusting jewellery very simple. Riddle was obsessed with his heritage, with his noble Slytherin ancestry and all that it entailed, and it was telling that even the Gaunt ring—the direct, tangible artefact of that lineage—was undeserving of a place on his heart-finger. There was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that he was well aware of the ancient notion of the _vena amoris_ (a vein that purportedly linked the fourth finger of the left hand directly to the heart), and his refusal to wear the ring on that finger, despite the fact that it was the most monetarily and sentimentally valuable thing that he owned, spoke to the depths of his bitterness and to his viciously determined independence. Even the Gaunts, his immediate and indisputable tie to his _illustrious_ origins, were unworthy of a place in his heart. _What heart_ , she thought to herself, mockingly, and had to rein in a little huff of malicious amusement.

Looking at the ring, Hermione felt almost sick. Despite all that she knew, all that she had researched in her time, all the incontrovertible, physical and magical evidence that she had seen, it was difficult to reconcile the object’s history with its unremarkable reality. Not just a Horcrux (as if that wasn’t horrifying enough), but also a Hallow. Thought it wasn’t precisely _ugly_ , it was scarcely an object of any great loveliness. The stone was shiny, but not precious: perhaps obsidian, but nothing of particular inherent value. The band was gold, moderately well-worked, but not overly elaborate, and slightly dull with age. She could just make out the etching on the stone, the painfully familiar symbol of the Hallows, and she wondered again how it could have gone unnoticed for so many decades. How could Riddle have worn it on his finger, _concealed a piece of his soul_ inside it, and yet never even have thought to ask what that symbol might mean? It wasn’t that she was surprised at his not knowing—part of growing up in the muggle world was not sharing childhood experiences with your magical peers, and until Dumbledore had left her his copy, she had never even heard of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_. Still, if _she_ had snatched a mysterious family heirloom from a forebear, and seen that unusual marking, she would have been powerless to resist the temptation of researching it. In fact, when she’d seen it scribbled in her inherited copy of the unassuming little volume, that was exactly what she _had_ done, first by looking in her Ancient Runes books, then by reading more widely, and finally by asking Harry if he’d ever seen it. Riddle’s entire entourage was composed of prominent Purebloods, most of them Sacred Twenty-Eight, and, while they wouldn’t necessarily have known the sign for what it was, there was _no way_ that they wouldn’t have been able to dispel Marvolo Gaunt’s notion that it was a coat of arms. They might even have recognised it as the symbol of the Hallows—Xenophilius Lovegood, while admittedly strange, had known what the symbol represented, and how it was constructed—and wouldn’t _that_ have proven a matter of enormous interest to Riddle, given his determination to cheat death.

It was interesting, really, that Riddle’s fierce independence and obsessive secrecy had worked against him in that respect. If he’d been more open with his followers this early, _told_ them about his plans for immortality, _asked_ for their help, he might have become aware of the Hallows much sooner. Hermione was still trying to figure out what his followers knew, what they didn’t, how far he trusted their discretion, and how much of himself he’d revealed to them, but she had the distinct impression that they _didn’t_ know about the Horcruxes. While they certainly gravitated to Riddle, respected him, possibly even feared him, they didn’t treat him with the terror or circumspection that she would have expected if they’d known the full extent of his deeds. Even among dark wizards, Horcruxes were taboo: Herpo the Foul was the only known creator, aside from Voldemort, and they’d been separated by a span of several thousand years, so the procedure was hardly common. While her classmates had undoubtedly been exposed to a variety of unsavoury magic from a relatively young age, she certainly didn’t think they’d have encountered anything of that magnitude. Some nasty hexes, yes; the occasional cursed object, yes; blood maledictions and family renunciations, yes. Soul fragments divided through remorseless murder and tucked into random objects for safekeeping? The ‘Darkest Art’? Probably not.

Even to wizards and witches, who regularly witnessed and performed marvels and peculiarities that muggles could scarcely have comprehended, the soul possessed a certain sanctity. It was _meant_ to remain as one ineffable whole, and everything in its makeup (whatever _that_ entailed) urged it to unity and revolted against the prospect of separation. The near-indivisibility of the soul was what made Horcrux creation so scarce in the first place. The soul was so determined to remain intact that creating a Horcrux required much more than _just_ a murder. Even murder, the most terrible, irreversible crime, couldn’t sever one portion of soul from the remainder. Rather, it created a kind of fracture that could be exploited; the actual… _severing_ …was a result of the Horcrux rituals. The soul’s desire to remain intact was further evidenced by the fragments’ inability to exist unsupported. Once separated from the whole, they were so fragile that they required a container and, if that container was destroyed, the fragment died with it. They were almost anti-souls, in that sense. Where an intact soul endured beyond the physical body, a soul fragment was wholly contingent upon the continuation of its container. You could layer that container with as many protective measures as you liked, but there was no way of diminishing the soul piece’s reliance upon its vessel.

The soul’s aversion to being split apart meant that producing a Horcrux required the creator to actually fight _against_ the nature of their own soul and, by extension, their own self. As if the requirement for murder without remorse wasn’t enough, the rituals were exceedingly difficult and apparently horrifically painful, demanding formidable strength of will as well as remarkable magical power. They were also vile beyond description. Hermione was far from squeamish, but even the memory of what she had read in _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ made bile rise in the back of her throat. She vividly remembered one occasion during the Horcrux hunt, when she had left the book open on the table as part of her research (she’d been doing a side-by-side reading with multiple other texts, and hadn’t wanted to lose her place). As she’d tried to go to sleep, she had been unable to think of anything _but_ the book’s contents, and she’d eventually had to get up and close it (and put another book on top of it for good measure) as if to prevent its horror from somehow seeping into the world. As ridiculous and childish as it seemed in retrospect, she was fairly certain she’d do the same again if the situation arose. The book was so utterly nightmarish that the thought of sleeping in its presence, with all the dread on the pages uncovered and open to the air, still unsettled her.

It was strange to think of that unspeakable book (currently tucked safely within her beaded bag, which was transfigured to look like a dull leather satchel and tucked in between some pairs of pants in her trunk), and to think that the boy next to her had read it too. He had seen those same terrible words, likely pored over the same ghastly diagrams, and instead of being nauseated, had been…what? Titillated? No, that was too mild, too flirtatious. Inspired? Too positive and too linked to creativity. Perhaps _impelled_ was closer to the mark. Having found that knowledge—that priceless, terrifying knowledge—that seemed the path to his ultimate goal, she could imagine how driven he must have felt, how desperate the urge must have been to test that information by whatever means necessary, no matter the atrocity that might be required.

Even if you _did_ successfully create a Horcrux, it didn’t alleviate the soul fragment’s wish to be reunited with the whole. That was why the only thing that was required to undo a Horcrux was remorse. While she didn’t think that remorse would necessarily come easily to the type of person who successfully manufactured a Horcrux, there was no real equivalence between the processes of making and unmaking: that a Horcrux was almost impossible to make, but could be unmade through something as simple as a feeling, something as effortless and instinctive as _remorse_ , was a testament to the soul’s ceaseless impulse to ensure its own completeness. Mutilating your soul to such an extent was almost unthinkable, and it was a crime you committed against yourself, as well as against the hapless murder victim.

With all that in mind, Hermione certainly didn’t think that Riddle would be freely disseminating information concerning his own forays into Horcrux creation. Certainly, the Lucius Malfoy of her time couldn’t have known the diary’s true importance, or he’d never had discarded it so carelessly. She thought that Bellatrix Lestrange might have known about the Cup of Hufflepuff, particularly given the mad bitch’s abject terror when she suspected they’d been in her vault (Hermione quickly stamped down on the memory of Bellatrix’s interrogation, subconsciously touching her arm), but the details of his Horcruxes didn’t seem to be something Voldemort had shared widely. If, in the security and power of his 1990s rebirth, he hadn’t seen fit to disclose the truth to his followers, there was little reason to think that he’d been any more forthcoming as a schoolboy.

She suspected that the others—Avery and Lestrange and the rest—must have known, or at least _suspected_ , that Riddle had something to do with Myrtle Warren’s death. Certainly, their attitude towards Riddle, despite his blood status, suggested that they knew something of his heritage, and if they knew he was the Heir of Slytherin, then they knew by extension that he was responsible for opening the Chamber of Secrets. It was no great deductive leap to realise that he was responsible for Myrtle’s demise, though she supposed he might have passed it off as an accident. Accident or not, if his ‘friends’ thought him capable of murder, they’d likely be obedient, compliant, and respectful, and she was sure Riddle would have played that to his own advantage. What he _did_ with her death, though... _that_ she imagined he had kept well up his neatly-pressed sleeve. If he had been so hesitant in going to Horace with it—approaching so carefully, with bribes, privacy, and the veneer of a ‘theoretical’ discussion—he was hardly likely to spout the gory details in some after-hours dick-waving contest in the dorm.

The thought of Horace pulled Hermione up short. When Riddle had asked Professor Slughorn about Horcruxes, it had been at the conclusion of a Slug Club meeting. When he’d asked, he had _also_ been wearing the Gaunt ring. Riddle had only acquired the ring over the recent holidays, and there hadn’t _been_ a Slug Club meeting yet. Her pulse escalated until she could almost feel it pounding it her wrists and throat. _Could it be that the ring wasn’t yet a Horcrux?_

The revelation was so startling that it brought Hermione back to herself, and she realised that she had been staring absent-mindedly at Riddle’s hands for what was probably an unnervingly long time. When she wrenched her gaze hastily away from the ring, it was to find his dark eyes boring into her face. She only barely avoided a guilty flinch at being caught staring, and hoped he wouldn’t think too much of it. One of his graceful eyebrows rose, just slightly, in an unspoken query. “I was just-” ‘ _disapproving of’_ , _‘considering how repulsed I am by_ ’, her mind supplied unhelpfully, “-admiring your ring.” she forced out, not sounding _too_ much like she had a broomstick shoved up her backside. Riddle glanced down at the ring perfectly casually, as if it were nothing more than a harmless little trinket.

“Hardly the most handsome object,” he murmured, with an air of slight self-deprecation, “but a family heirloom.”

“I see.” she replied, and if _that_ wasn’t a bloody scintillating response, well, colour her green and call her a Grindylow.


	6. Skiving Snackboxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quidditch tryouts conclude, and the pitfalls of sharing a dormitory with boys become apparent. Hermione struggles to formulate a plan, and an encounter in the library prompts an epiphany.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurrah, an update! Thank you all for your patience, and for taking the time to read, leave kudos, and review - I really appreciate the engagement with the story, and I hope you'll enjoy this newest chapter, which concludes the 'September' sequence. I've already started working on the 'October' chapters, and look forward to sharing in due course.

**VI. Skiving Snackboxes**

_“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”_ – Mark Twain

They sat there in silence. Hermione, who was carefully looking anywhere except at Riddle in an attempt to compensate for her previous indiscretion, found herself actually attending to the sport before them. They were trying out Chasers, and the current hopeful (or, perhaps, victim) was a brunette who very clearly had no business being anywhere close to the pitch. As the Quaffle sailed through the girl’s spread hands for the sixth consecutive time, Hermione snorted rather unkindly. While she probably wouldn’t have done better herself, she _also_ wouldn’t have chosen to advertise her incompetence by trying out in the first place. Noting the impolite sound, Riddle glanced at her briefly.

“Something funny?” he asked.

“Just this girl.” Hermione muttered back. She was still embarrassed at having been caught looking at him, and now even _more_ embarrassed by how petty and spiteful she must seem, sitting on the sidelines and laughing at a stranger’s ineptitude, but Riddle seemed unfazed by her needless nastiness. Figuring that a bit of unwarranted meanness would reinforce the notion that she _did_ belong in Slytherin, despite her soft spot for Bowtruckles, Hermione elaborated. “If the Quaffle was the size of a pumpkin she _still_ wouldn’t be anywhere near it.”

“I thought it was the taking part that counted.” Riddle observed diplomatically. Hermione scoffed again, even more loudly.

“Don’t tell me you believe that, Riddle.” she said dryly, unable to help herself. “I saw you duel yesterday—it’s being the _best_ that counts.” she saw his lips thin ever so slightly in a subtle smile, but he didn’t bother to address her discreet compliment or the unspoken accusation that accompanied it.

“I was under the impression that you didn’t care for Quidditch?” he drew her attention back to the hapless girl who, having finally secured the Quaffle, had promptly dropped it. Even from a distance of fifty yards, Hermione fancied she could sense Avery’s frustration as he swooped to catch the ball before it hit the ground.

“I don’t. There are any number of things I don’t care for.” _Like you, for example_ , she thought snidely. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t know anything about them.”

“So you’re a student of the game, if not a fan?”

“I wouldn’t put it that strongly. I’ve known a few keen Quidditch players, and have been forced to develop at least _some_ appreciation for the sport. I don’t know much,” she hastened to add, “but I know enough to know that _she_ ,” she indicated the girl, “is wasting everyone’s time.”

“Like ours?” Riddle commented wryly, and Hermione let out a startled half-laugh. _Ours_ , applied to herself and Voldemort, seemed like such a strange and foreign word. She wondered if he’d used it deliberately, and whether, having observed her silent exchange with Mulciber the previous day, he imagined that he was extending an unobtrusive offer of camaraderie. It was understated in the extreme: nothing like a proposal of friendship; innocuous enough that it could be interpreted in countless ways; sufficiently vague that any interpretation she _did_ make could be easily dismissed; and so seemingly thoughtless that he could easily deny having ever said it. Nonetheless, it was _there_.

The desire to take his olive branch and fling it in his face was intense, but Hermione wasn’t an idiot, so she just twitched her mouth into a momentary smile.

“Like ours.” she confirmed. As Riddle turned his attention back to the pitch, she could have sworn that the ambient temperature rose by at least several degrees.

***

It wasn’t much longer before the tryouts concluded, and Avery, Mulciber and Lestrange—the former two lightly spattered with mud, the latter looking as though he’d avoided any actual involvement—made their way towards the bleachers.

Alfred, sauntering across the lawn and laughing brightly with Caius, was in his element. With his broom resting on his shoulder, his hair gently tousled, and his complexion warmed by the exercise, he looked like a poster boy for school sports, and Hermione noticed that he was attracting more than one admiring look from the few girls who’d assembled.

Mulciber, his enormous build barely contained by the light leather of his uniform, also seemed the happiest she had seen him. While he wasn’t really talking—did he ever?—he looked pleased about whatever Avery was saying, and his usual expression of mild consternation (frequently evident in a little crease between his eyebrows) had been replaced by something more relaxed and contented. Whether you were in the 1940s or the 1990s, it seemed that Quidditch was the panacea for every ill in a teenaged boy’s world. She shook her head ever so slightly—it was a sentiment she’d never understand.

Lestrange, to her satisfaction, looked like someone had forced him to lick piss off an acid pop. To the surprise of exactly nobody, he’d missed out on a place on the team; not because he flew badly, but because he was far less concerned with gaining possession of the Quaffle than he was in looking at the bleachers to ensure he had captured the attention of the small female portion of the audience. Abraxas Malfoy—whose attention to the passage of play apparently trumped his interest in petticoats—had attained the coveted Chaser position, and Rainier’s face was correspondingly sour. He didn’t bother to speak to any of them, and kicked at the grass as he flounced off alone in the direction of the castle.

“Will Lestrange be okay?” she didn’t really care either way, but it seemed conscientious to at least enquire.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine.” Avery replied, looking at the wizard’s huffily retreating figure. “He’ll be as toxic as a doxy in a strop for the next day or two, and he’ll get a nasty letter from home, but he’ll get over it. The truth is that he really doesn’t care that much.”

“If he doesn’t care, why bother trying out?” Hermione asked, puzzled.

“Mostly because Lord Lestrange expects it. Well, that and the girls.” Alfred grinned, and she rolled her eyes to let him know that she’d noticed Lestrange’s _preoccupation_.

“What about girls?” an upbeat, feminine voice broke unexpectedly into the conversation.

“Never you mind.” Alfred chuckled, throwing one arm around the shoulders of the newest speaker. She was a couple of years their junior and very pretty, with a pert little upturned nose, hazel eyes abundantly streaked with green, and golden blonde hair in a high ponytail. While it had been difficult to make out her features from a distance, the ponytail informed Hermione that this was the new Slytherin Seeker, and the only girl to make the team. “Just that they’re hopeless at Quidditch, that most of them only turned up for two hours of uninterrupted perving, and that there’s no way they should make the team— _ouch_!” Avery broke off with a smothered curse as the girl elbowed him sharply in the ribcage, and pulled her even more securely against his side to limit her movements as she struggled to liberate herself from his embrace.

“Let _go_ , Alfred, you’re all sweaty and disgusting—”

“Your friend Bette didn’t seem to think so.” Alfred replied with a lascivious wink. “She was so busy gawking at me that Caius nearly knocked her out with that Bludger.”

“Bette also needs her eyes tested.” the girl informed him tartly. “I thought that would have been obvious, given that she couldn’t make out the Quaffle.”

“You’re just jealous.” Alfred informed her loftily, turning his nose snootily upwards.

“Pixie dust,” the girl scoffed back, “I came to the catch the _Snitch_ , not anybody’s eye. Now, are you going to introduce me to your friend?” she looked pointedly at Hermione, who was suddenly struck by the realisation that this was probably Alfred’s _betrothed_. There couldn’t have been more than a couple of years between them, and she could easily discern their mutual affection, despite the girl’s playful protests. Avery gave a long-suffering sigh.

“Eleanor, this is Hermes Grangier. Hermes, this is Eleanor, the ever-present Knarl quill in my side.” Eleanor, if that was her name, planted her heel neatly on Alfred’s booted toes, and he muttered another curse.

“Mister Grangier, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Eleanor extended a hand, which Hermione shook gently, wondering if she'd imagined the faintly bemused expression on the girl’s face.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Miss…?” she trailed off, unaware of the surname.

“Avery, of course!” Alfred grunted, still wriggling his toes.

“I, of _course_ , sorry.” she mumbled, feeling a bit of pink come to her cheeks. _Merlin_ , to think she’d been trying to figure out a polite way of asking whether they’d been forced into an arranged marriage. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Avery. Congratulations on making the team.”

They were making their way back to the castle at a leisurely pace, three of them largely silent in the face of the relentless patter between the two siblings, when Riddle interjected. Alfred and Eleanor—who, in the fashion of true Quidditch enthusiasts, were engaged in a second-by-second breakdown of the preceding two hours—had just mentioned a girl named Jessica Flint.

“Poor Miss Flint,” Riddle said slyly, throwing a sideways glance at Hermione, “Grangier was most disparaging about her abilities.”

“In fairness, Riddle,” she started, wanting to defend herself, “she could barely balance on that broomstick, let alone accomplish anything while she was up there.”

“That’s because the only _broomstick_ she’s interested in _balancing on_ is Tom’s.” Alfred snorted out as he and his sister pealed with laughter. Even Mulciber gave a low chuckle, and when Hermione looked at Riddle she was surprised to note the faintest trace of colour high in his cheeks, despite the careful stoicism of his expression.

“Don’t be crass, Alfred.” he said primly.

“Nimue’s nipples,” Avery continued, apparently undeterred, “do you remember that time she—”

“That’s _enough_.” Riddle said. There was a clear warning in his tone, and Hermione saw a shadow of what looked like nervousness flicker momentarily across Avery’s face. An instant later it was gone, and the blond had hitched his smile back into position with a light laugh. Eleanor’s eyes darted momentarily between her brother and Riddle, concern evident in the slight contraction of her neatly-plucked brows, and Hermione filed the episode away for further consideration.

***

Only a few minutes later they had finally reached their dormitory, where Rosier and Nott—both looking relaxed and warm and not at all as if they’d spent a freezing morning sitting on a stupid bleacher—were reading quietly on their respective beds.

“How’d it go?” Rosier asked immediately. “I assume, based on the frightful snit,” he nodded meaningfully in the direction of the locked bathroom, where a temperamental Lestrange was presumably confined, “that Rainier missed out?”

“Yep.” Mulciber mumbled quietly, making his way to his own bed.

“Too busy making eyes at Evelyn,” Alfred informed Rosier, shedding his body armour and dumping it untidily on his trunk, “didn’t even spot the Quaffle until it nearly knocked him off his broom.”

Hermione couldn’t help the sudden, involuntary heat that crept up her cheeks as Avery, still detailing some manoeuvre to an attentive Rosier, peeled off his shirt and stood bare-chested in the middle of the room. While he was, thankfully, still wearing the close-fitting pants that constituted the bottom half of the uniform, it was quite a view, and she averted her eyes hastily, hoping that nobody had noticed her flush.

It wasn’t that Hermione was a stranger to male nudity, partial or otherwise. She wasn’t a prude, and in their months on the run, she had seen a fair bit of Ron, and _way_ more of Harry than she had ever cared to. Still, this seemed _different_ , somehow. She had fancied Ron, of course, but they’d also grown up together for much of their lives. Seeing him in his underwear had felt a natural sort of progression, an unspoken acknowledgement that they would, eventually, see all of one another. By the same token, their mutual romantic interest had resulted in a (rather sweet) degree of shyness on both their parts, and they had always tried to give one another as much privacy as possible.

Seeing Harry in various stages of undress had been decidedly less endearing, but occasionally unavoidable. While there was nothing wrong with Harry’s appearance, he had been so much like a brother to her for so many years that the thought of him in the buff made her screw up her nose in distaste, and she was quite sure the feeling had been reciprocated. While she had always observed, in a distant sort of way, that Harry was reasonably good-looking, the fact also remained that both he and Ron had still looked like _boys_. Even at seventeen Ron had been gangly, with huge feet, knobby limbs, and hardly any chest. Hermione hadn’t cared—she was hardly the most inspiring physical specimen herself—but truth was truth. Harry had always been a bit more sturdily built, and six years on the Quidditch team had kept him in fairly good shape, but he was still Harry: always making himself smaller in an effort to avoid the constant notice that followed him everywhere, always rubbing his hand awkwardly on the back of his neck, always with his hair in a state of disarray that made him look younger than his age.

Alfred Avery, on the other hand, was not only a relative stranger, but also fucking _fit_. While he definitely wasn’t as bulky as Viktor, or even Cormac, he had broad shoulders, good arms, and a chest that could have been reasonably described as…well, a chest. He had _abs_ , for Merlin’s sake, and while they weren’t overly defined, they certainly drew attention downwards to where the points of his hipbones were revealed by his low-riding pants. She was almost tempted to look lower, but reined the impulse in firmly. _Get a grip_ , she scolded herself internally, _you’re not here to ogle future Death Eaters_. She’d realised, obviously, that seeing her dorm-mates half naked would likely be part and parcel of her disguise, but there was an unexpectedly sharp distinction between intellectual acceptance and tangible reality.

The pants, of course, were a problem all of their own. While she would never have confessed it out loud, even to Ginny, Hermione had always had a (slightly shameful) weakness for tall guys in Quidditch uniform, and Avery was unwittingly checking both of those boxes. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that she had hurried to her bed in an effort to avoid him, the boy in question wandered a little closer. “Hermes,” he asked, as she studiously inspected her bed-curtains, “you okay?”

“Nothing.” Hermione instinctively replied, still very much in her own head, where she was defending her guilty penchant for those stupid pants against an intrigued Ginny Weasley. It was only a fraction of a second later that she realised that ‘nothing’ was not an appropriate response to a yes-or-no question. “That is, nothing’s the matter.” she awkwardly patched over her mistake, hoping that Avery wouldn’t notice. “I’m just thinking ahead, to the library. I might go and grab that rook on boons. _Runes_ , rather. Book on Runes.”

“You sure?” Alfred looked unsurprisingly mystified by her strange behaviour, and she tried to give him a reassuring smile as he reached for his waistband, clearly intending to remove his pants as well.

“ _Yesofcourse_!” she squeaked. “I’ll catch you later, Alfred.” she spun on her heel, ready to make her getaway, and nearly collided with Riddle. “Riddle.” she muttered by way of farewell and, slinging her book bag over her shoulder, fled.

***

For as long as she could remember, Hermione had been an avid list-writer. No matter the task, she liked to have a plan, and her study schedules were the stuff of legend (and, admittedly, mockery). Harry and Ron had never understood her need to order her thoughts on paper, and had stubbornly refused to even _consider_ adhering to the schedules she had designed for them (schedules Harry had jokingly called the Holy Writ, much to Ron’s confusion). It was scarcely surprising, therefore, that having met Tom Riddle and spent a few days in his company, her first port of call was a piece of parchment and a self-inking quill. Tucked away in her favourite library nook, with all of her material carefully laid out around her, she could almost pretend that she was still in the 1990s, working on a particularly difficult assignment. She had already placed a number of security charms on all of her research—a glamour to make it appear as notes on Runes and Arithmancy, another (a variant of the Muggle Repelling Charm) to cause people to lose concentration when they tried to read it, a modified _flagrante_ curse to ensure that it would burst into flame if anyone attempted to use magic on it—so that she could note her thoughts without censorship or coded language. While she didn’t intend to leave such sensitive material lying around, a little caution certainly wouldn’t go astray.

_TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE_

Put onto parchment, the words looked so simple and unassuming; innocuous, even. Looking at the harmless row of little letters, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Riddle liked word games, and how long it had taken him to develop his alias. Honestly, how many permutations had he had to test before he _finally_ came to ‘I am Lord Voldemort’? The only word that jumped particularly into Hermione’s mind, given the combination of letters before her, was ‘vomit’, and she could see why Riddle might have chosen to pass that up. _Dollar Vomitdrome_ , she thought, with a mental snigger. It was a dangerous, stupid sort of game, but once she’d started, she couldn’t help herself. She had just snorted out loud at _Dammit Drool Lover_ when she realised that someone had approached while she’d been composing ridiculous anagrams. With a slightly guilty start, and despite the protective enchantments, she instinctively placed a forearm over her parchment.

“Grangier, yes?” the boy asked, giving her a bit of a strange look. He was probably unnerved by her stifled chortling, and she couldn’t really blame him.

“Yes. You’re,” she paused to look at his dark hair and grey eyes, “Black, right?”

“One of them, anyway.” he smiled uncertainly. “I’m Alphard. We were briefly introduced at the welcome feast, but I’m honestly surprised that you remember _anyone_ , given Lestrange’s inability to shut up.”

Alphard Black, Hermione remembered, had been Sirius’ uncle, and had bequeathed a substantial inheritance to Sirius. He’d been disowned (he was nothing but a charred hole in the Black family tapestry), but Sirius had, on more than one occasion, spoken of him fondly. It followed that Alphard mustn’t have conformed to the fanatical blood purity that characterised his sister and his brother in law, making him one of the black sheep of the family. One of the ‘Black sheep,’ she thought to herself with an internal titter. He certainly _looked_ like a bit of a rebel. Clad in cuffed jeans and a simple, crew necked white tee shirt, his style of dress was both more casual _and_ more muggle than any of her classmates. The outfit was finished with a weathered and heavily-patched bomber jacket—thinking back to Sirius’ leather jacket, she wondered whether Padfoot might have styled himself after his favourite uncle—which didn’t quite conceal a hint of ink at his wrist. For a heart-stopping moment, Hermione thought that Riddle must have _already_ started marking his followers, and that Alphard Black must have been a Voldemort sympathiser after all, but when he whipped the jacket off and draped it over the back of a chair she saw the tattoo for what it was: a raunchy depiction of a mermaid performing a rather _risqué_ act on an eel. As a magical tattoo, it had the usual movement enchantments applied, which only emphasised the...suggestive motions of the mermaid’s mouth and throat. Clearly noticing the direction of her gaze, Alphard gave a slightly apologetic-looking shrug. “Try not to read too much into it. I regretted it almost as soon as I had it done, but it was worth it to see the look on my parents’ faces. If you’d met them, you’d understand.”

“I take it they don’t approve?” she asked, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

“Understatement of the century.” he informed her with obvious satisfaction. “Added bonus is that Wally absolutely _hates_ it, so I wave it under her nose as often as I can.”

“And Wally is your-”

“Sister. You met her at the feast.”

“Yes,” Hermione’s tone turned rather sour, “I recall.” Alphard looked down at her with assessing cendrée eyes.

“Do you mind?” he gestured at the seat next to her, the one he’d already claimed with his jacket.

“Be my guest.” she said, then busied herself with her notes, figuring that he must have work to do. After almost a full minute, he’d done nothing save sit there staring at her. “Did you...need something?” she asked slowly. He picked at a loose thread on the pocket of his jeans, then glanced guiltily around her discreet little library alcove, as if to check that they were alone.

“I-” he paused, rubbing a hand over his lightly-stubbled chin. He looked as though he grew a pretty decent beard for a fourteen-year-old; Harry and Ron had never managed much more than patchy stubble or the pathetic wisp of moustache. “You’re a half-blood, right, Grangier?”

Hermione had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. She should have fucking guessed.

“Yes, as your sister has already delighted in pointing out.” she said bitingly, and Alphard’s eyes widened.

“I, no, that’s not what I meant.” he looked around again, nervously. “I just-” he stopped again. “Look, I shouldn’t even be saying this, but I just wanted to _warn_ you.”

“Warn me about what?” she said, with a bit of a sneer. “The rampant blood prejudice?”

“ _Yes_.” he hissed, throwing yet another anxious glance over his shoulder. “Look, Grangier, I don’t care that you’re a Half-Blood. I may be Sacred Twenty-Eight, but unlike my zealot parents, or my bitch of a sister, or my blood-purist baby brother Cygnus, I don’t give a shit about whether or not you have a muggle parent. You’re obviously magical, and that’s all that matters. My _pedigree_ ,” the word was laden with scorn, “is a hundred percent magical. Yours isn’t. Big deal—we’re not bloody _Crups_.”

“Right.” she said, trying to discern his angle. While she obviously agreed with his sentiments, seeing eye to eye with _her_ was hardly going to gain _him_ any particular advantage.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that, while _I_ don’t give a fairy’s fart about your blood status, the same isn’t true of all our housemates. You should be careful. People like my sister, people like Orion, people like Rainier…they aren’t nearly as free-thinking as I am, and they could make your life unpleasant.”

“Is that a threat?” Hermione spoke lowly, and Alphard looked scandalised.

“Merlin, no. If I was trying to threaten you, I’d be a little more subtle about it. It’s an observation. I’ve seen them at work before.”

“Oh?” _that_ piqued Hermione’s interest.

“Yes. It’s always the same stupid shit: slip something nasty into their pumpkin juice to induce an embarrassing episode of diarrhoea, put something slimy in their bed, throw something in a cauldron so that it blows up or spoils the potion. It’s generally dumb and juvenile, but it’s also nasty, and it can be dangerous.”

They regarded each other for a long moment; cool, even grey meeting warm, striated brown. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know.” Alphard confessed. “I heard you at breakfast the other day, and I know you’re not a big believer in Divination, but I just…had a feeling. My sister may have missed out on beauty _and_ brains—and personality, come to think of it—but she has a good family name and an obscene amount of money and, courtesy of those, she’s very used to getting her own way. I liked that you stood up to her at the feast; that you reminded her that being _toujours pur_ ,” he practically spat the words, “doesn’t mean you’re _toujours_ right, or _toujours_ entitled to stick your nose into other people’s business or rub theirs in your supposed superiority. It was good for her to be put in her place, and it was good for the others to hear you do it.”

“Cheers.” Hermione mumbled, feeling rather gratified, and slightly embarrassed by her earlier aggression (though she didn’t necessarily take Alphard’s words at face value either).

“I’ve already heard enough about you to suggest that you’re formidable, Grangier, and if you’re as skilful as they’re saying, then I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. One of the good things about that Slytherin cunning is that it usually goes hand in hand with a pretty healthy sense of self-preservation. They like soft targets, which you clearly aren’t, so they’re unlikely to try anything, but just…take care of yourself, yeah? Look out for _them_.” Hermione examined him more carefully, and fancied she could see earnestness in his expression. There was no hint of deception in the slight crease between his brows or the firm set of his mouth, and he met her scrutiny unwaveringly. She nodded slowly.

“I will.”

Alphard blew a relieved breath out of his cheeks. “Good.” he said, and stood from his chair abruptly, hooking his finger under the collar of his jacket and slinging it over his shoulder so that he looked like a stereotypical bad boy from some trashy vintage film.

“Alphard?” she said, and he waited. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Grangier.” he said, inclining his head politely. He made to turn, but paused to give her a brief, appraising glance. “While I’m sure it goes without saying, we never had this conversation.”

Hermione couldn’t quite conceal her surprise: it was all so terribly… _Slytherin_ , and she struggled to think of a suitably cloak-and-dagger response. Fortunately, it only took a heartbeat.

“What conversation?” she said mildly, and a momentary grin flashed across Alphard’s face. He started to walk away, and Hermione had another thought. She briefly considered staying silent, but figured she had nothing to lose.

“Alphard?” she asked again, and he stopped, looking back at her over his shoulder. “Tom Riddle’s a half-blood, isn’t he?” while she kept her tone casual-curious, Hermione noted the sudden tension that lengthened Alphard’s spine. His throat shifted as he swallowed once.

“I believe so, yes. Riddle certainly isn’t a Pureblood surname.”

“Did they—Rainier and those types, I mean—did they do those things to _him_ , when he started at Hogwarts?”

“I couldn’t say.” Alphard replied, a shade too quickly. “Like I told you, they prefer easy victims, and Tom was already in third year when I was a firstie.” Hermione jerked her head in acknowledgement and made to return to her work. “But Grangier?” Alphard’s voice was low and guarded, and she arched her eyebrows to let him know she was listening. “I’d look out for him, too.”

So saying, and with a final, parting nod, Alphard Black and his lewd tattoo vanished into the stacks.

***

As desperately intrigued as she was by Alphard’s words, Hermione was conscious that her private library time was a precious commodity, and not one she ought to squander. Taking a fresh sheet of parchment, she neatly wrote _Alphard Pollux Black_ at the top, then put it aside, where it joined a pile of similar pages featuring various names. Taking a moment to shift _Rainier Felix Lestrange_ to the very bottom of the pile (a petty but strangely satisfying move), Hermione returned to the task at hand.

 _TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE_ (she underlined the heading, just for good measure)

_Strengths:_

  * _Intelligent_
  * _Magically powerful_
  * _Handsome_
  * _Popular (with students & staff)_
  * _Sympathetic appearance and backstory (poor, orphan, etc.)_
  * _Excellent manipulator_
  * _Power within school system (Prefect, eventual Head Boy)_
  * _Heir of Slytherin (useful within his circle)_
  * _Access to Chamber of Secrets (still open? Safe to use?)_
  * _Basilisk_
  * _Horcrux(es) – Diary (Ring?)_



_Weaknesses:_

  * _Poverty (esp. relevant to his social set)_
  * _Blood status_
  * _Constantly lying (therefore at risk of a mistake)_
  * _Arrogant (despite the fake modesty) – does he underestimate others?_
  * _Suspected by Dumbledore (but he knows this)_
  * _No empathy_
  * _Fear of death_
  * _Can’t use Gaunt/Slytherin name to public advantage_
  * _Damaged (unstable?) soul_



While it wasn’t a bad start, it was hardly information that she had inferred on her own. Much of it was inherited from Harry and, via Harry, from Professor Dumbledore. Still, it seemed mostly right, and until Riddle chose to furnish her with additional details, it would have to suffice.

She paused for a minute, and considered the factors that made fighting the Voldemort of the future so exceptionally difficult. After all, Grindelwald had been felled simply, in a Wizard’s duel with an opponent of sufficient power (namely Dumbledore). The same method would certainly not have worked for Voldemort.

_Future Challenges:_

  * _Horcruxes (i.e. Immortality)_
  * _Individual power_
  * _Army of Death Eaters_
  * _Psychopathy/Sociopathy_
  * _Ministry takeover_
  * _Lack of information (i.e. from Order)_



Hermione considered the newest list. Tom Riddle was a powerful, gifted, inventive wizard with a thirst for knowledge and a desire to push his magic beyond safety and comfort. There was, unfortunately, very little she could do about that. His magic was his magic, and his personality was his personality. At his current age, and with a couple of homicides, a troupe of admiring underlings, and some accomplished Dark magic already under his belt, he was unlikely to change in any meaningful way in the short term. She crossed out ‘individual power’. The lack of information from the Order would also cease to be relevant in her current timeline. Firstly, because the threat had not yet arisen, and the Order would not yet have been formed; secondly, because she already had most (if not all) of the information that had been available to the Order of the 1990s; thirdly, because she was living Tom Riddle’s story this time around, and would have the opportunity to fill in the blanks for herself. She scratched ‘lack of information’ from her list as well. The Ministry takeover happened too late in Voldemort’s timeline for her to do anything about it at the current moment. While it was a good thing to keep in mind, if and when he gathered power, there was no point wasting time or resources fretting about it for the time being. She struck it from the list. Though the Tom Riddle of the 1940s was undoubtedly a monster, he certainly hadn’t deteriorated to the extent that he later would. This Riddle was not the paranoid, degenerate, physically-unstable madman of the future, so she (reluctantly) took psychopathy off the list.

_Future Challenges:_

  * _Horcruxes/Immortality_
  * _~~Individual power~~_
  * _Army of Death Eaters_
  * _~~Psychopathy/Sociopathy~~_
  * _~~Ministry takeover~~_
  * _~~Lack of information (i.e. from Order)~~_



In Hermione’s opinion and experience, the best way to manage any threat was to neutralise what made it especially dangerous to you. If you were worried that someone was planning to betray you (Marietta Edgecombe), you negated their capacity for secrecy. If someone was slandering you in their gossip rag, you prevented their access to your private life. _Proactive_ measures, for all that they may carry more inherent risk (and might not actually arise until the problem had already manifested), were far more certain than _reactive_ measures. You couldn’t _retrospectively_ apply pustules to the traitor in your midst unless you knew who’d dobbed on you. You couldn’t make a journalist _unwrite_ whatever lies they’d put to paper. It was one of the things that had made the wretched Horcrux hunt so difficult in the first place: they had been on the back foot from the start, not knowing enough about what they were doing to take active steps towards actually _doing_ it, and had been forced to repeatedly evade capture and respond to existing threats rather than preventing pursuit or avoiding those threats altogether.

Put simply, it was blatantly obvious that she needed to prevent Riddle from creating additional Horcruxes. The diary was done, and she couldn’t change it, but she _knew_ about it, and knew how it could be destroyed. The ring, however, wasn’t done _yet_.

If she could secure herself an invitation to the Slug Club, then there was a chance she could prevent Riddle and Slughorn’s conversation from taking place. It wasn’t a plan that Hermione particularly liked, as so much of it was due to chance: _if_ she was invited to the Slug Club, _if_ their conversation followed this particular meeting, _if_ she could cause a sufficient disruption to stop them from talking to one another, _if_ Slughorn didn’t dismiss her in order to be alone with Riddle, _if_ Riddle didn’t make another attempt in the future. It was worth thinking about, certainly, but it was hardly watertight. Then again, she supposed humourlessly, she was hardly likely to come up with _any_ plan that was completely watertight.

Hermione looked at her three lists, side by side, and tried to find some missing link between them. There was _always_ a way of tying these things together, if you looked hard enough, and constructing a narrative from seemingly irrelevant scraps of information was something that Hermione Jean Granger had always done well. She’d figured out the Basilisk when she’d been _thirteen_ , for Merlin’s sake, so she was quite sure that she could derive something from the material in front of her.

Glaring at the list of his weaknesses, she tried to figure out how any of them might be effectively weaponised. His poverty was useless to her—while she suspected he was too proud to be a terribly willing recipient of charity, his lack of funds wouldn’t actually _prevent_ him from accomplishing anything he was planning. He’d always been a thief, and no matter how fabulously valuable the object (Slytherin’s Locket, Hufflepuff’s Cup), if he wanted it, he’d take it. While she would have assumed that his blood status would be an issue for his Sacred Twenty-Eight peers, that didn’t really seem to be the case. Being descended directly from Slytherin must have given him sufficient cachet that nobody felt it was worth mentioning his Muggle father. He couldn’t use the Slytherin-Gaunt connection to his advantage publicly (at least, not without raising uncomfortable questions about the Chamber of Secrets), but that didn’t really matter either: people were fascinated by him regardless. Though she liked the _thought_ that he might make a mistake and get caught out in one of his deceptions, he was clearly a consummate liar, and she didn’t want to rely on that possibility. Similarly, his arrogance seemed largely well-deserved, and he was so good at _feigning_ humility that he was unlikely to make a useful slip-up just when she needed one. While Dumbledore did definitely suspect him, that suspicion hadn’t been sufficient to prevent Myrtle’s death, Hagrid’s expulsion, or Riddle’s special award for services to the school, and was therefore unlikely to prove useful in the short term. There was a possibility that she might be able to exploit his lack of empathy, but she’d need to know more about his followers in order to do so, and she didn’t think she had the wherewithal or the knowledge to perform the kind of magic that might successfully cause his soul any further damage. That really only left his fear of death, and really, how on earth was she supposed to take advantage of _that_?

***

Later on, Hermione would be unable to pinpoint the exact moment that all of the disparate threads in her mind came together into a dangerous, dazzling tapestry.

 _Fear of death_ , the words had chased themselves around her head for what felt like hours, _fear of death, fear of death_. _Horcruxes_ , a different part of her mind chipped in. _Look out for him_ , Alphard’s unsettling warning, while it hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know, joined the oddly organised chaos of her thoughts, _look out for them, dumb and juvenile_.

Hermione let out a bit of a chuckle at the thought of her Pureblooded housemates booby-trapping one another. While she didn’t necessarily approve of their methods (and _definitely_ didn’t approve of the motivations behind them), something about the sheer deviousness reminded her of Fred and George, and brought a smile to her face. The Weasley twins would have been entirely behind the diarrhoea plot, though never due to someone’s blood status. In fact, she was surprised that they hadn’t thought of it when they put together their Skiving Snackboxes: _Laxative Lozenges_ or _Bowel-Blasting Bonbons_ or something similarly ghastly. She remembered (with a degree of fondness that she would once have imagined impossible) their eye-punching telescope, and the _tide_ of bleeding, vomiting, fainting, feverish students who had seen a constant flood of traffic through the hospital wing in the year following the launch of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.

Hermione’s eyes snapped to the lists in front of her as three concepts amalgamated into the most unlikely whole.

_Skiving Snackboxes. Fear of death. Horcruxes._

She had been wrong. For all that it seemed counter-intuitive, her purposes would be best served by _allowing_ Riddle to make that second Horcrux.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll also take the opportunity to mention that, since uploading the last chapter, I've completed two shorter Tomione fics. While some of you have seen them already, I invite those who haven't to go and have a look if they so wish. ^_^ They are titled 'Adamant' and 'Atropos'.


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